I am still processing today's session. It was huge.

At one point, I am under his desk, where I feel safest and I shut down, (I had not slept all night because I was missing him so much in a two year old or younger sort of way so am very very tired) and he offers to put his hand on mine, as he has learnt this stops me shutting down and brings me out. he does this and I hold his hand and when I feel his hand, the pain inside deepens and then I am in a whole different mind state, as though a dog is eating away at my left side and I am mewling these strange noises and thrashing about. In my head I am thinking "goodness, this is just bursting out of some long buried place in my mind and body" and my body is desperate to get away for the searing pain, legs kicking ( I think I knocked his chair over,) and sweetP is doing whatever it takes to move the objects in the room that could hurt me and even in all this (fascinating) awfulness, I try to turn it all around and it goes on for too long though I think in real life it was only probably a few minutes, it felt like 20 - and I make myself turn TOWARDS him and just grab his sleeve and hole in under his arm. He is by now on the floor beside me. I am still wailing this strange strangled sound that is quite peculiar. I am in terrible physical pain and emotional anguish. Life threatening. then I realize that I am being HELD. He is actually cuddling me, soothing me, I am gripping tightly to his arm with both hands and although my back is to him, he has me held and supported.

My mind goes: He is cuddling me!!!!!!!!!!!

I stop internally and try to feel this. I cannot. It is too much of a shock. It is just too much of a shock, in the sense of : how can this thing, that I have longed for, for over a YEAR, actually be happening?

And why am I not FEELING anything?

I realize that I am overloaded still with the trauma feelings and that I am very glad indeed to not be flailing about any more. It was very intense and explained a lot about how I feel. (He and I both could tell it was from when I was trapped, six months old, in a sink with scalding water pouring on me and eating away my left side. The feeling of being eaten away was huge. It was awful. And it was very apparent that I stopped crying out quite quickly, and then just kept trying, futilely, to get away from the 'eating dog.' (I was actually turned away from two hospitals as too badly burned to bother trying to work on me, and then had four years of grafts to put my leg and hip and back back to some sort of normality, until I was four years old.)

So, I left feeling drained and staggered to a cafe. Later I went swimming with our house guests and then to the cinema and then back to home for a buffet for 12 of us which was really fun where some of us played music. And yet all this was being and is still being processed underneath.

I looked at him at the end, before I asked (for only the second time ever), if I could have a hug - and I saw how much he cares, it was in his eyes. "You really care don't you!" "YEs, S, I do, deeply." "Sh*T, that hurts so much as it unlayers the scars and then I pine for you and get mad you are not there, - this is melting ALL my defences!" He hugged me and we both laughed and I listened to his heart beat for a while and then I said "Being hugged, here in this moment, I actually feel I could be strong and courageous." He replied, "S, you already ARE strong and courageous.". I hugged him tightly and accepted that he is right.

How good was that!