The time has come: my therapist is leaving

It's Tuesday evening and I want to be dead. Yesterday was Monday and my first day back at work after a week and a day off. I hate going back to work after a break. I never feel refreshed and renewed as you might imagine one would. I struggle to back into a routine. It's like the part who does 'work' for me doesn't come back right away and the real me is left to try and get on with things in a so much less efficient way.

The day started with a trip to Clinical Psychology to see T. Probably not a great start to your first day back at work at the best of times and definitely not this time. Going to psychology first thing is never a great start to any day really. I am not liking having morning appointments. It's just not working for me at all.

This time round we talked about the letter I sent her. Did I tell you about that on here? I can't remember if I did or not but it was from a part who had come to the conclusion that we were sexually abused. They wanted to tell T so that she would know that there is a part who knows it now. I can't really explain that very well just now; maybe I'll tell you another time.

We talked about a few other things. I went over old ground explaining how sometimes I am so separate from other parts of my life (including the whole DID/mental problems/therapy part) and if I get a reminder of it at that time it doesn't make sense to me. It's shocking. I got on to talking about what is 'normal' for people who don't have mental health problems. I told her that most nights I lie in bed thinking about taking a big knife and cutting my wrists open and this is the thought that drifts through my mind a lot before I fall asleep. I asked (rhetorically) was that normal and T gave the standard psychologist's speech about 'what is normal?' and said that it's not how psychologists think etc. It would probably make me feel much better if she just said: 'No, that's not normal Candy. I think you could use that as evidence for yourself to see that you are pretty fucked up in the head and not wasting my time coming here, as you might think'. 

Later in the session the conversation (if you could call it that) went something like this:

"Candycan I need to raise something with you... I'm going to be taking time out.

I've been thinking how I would say it to you and I haven't been able to so I thought I'll just have to say it." 

Silence from Candycan....

It's very short notice... I'll be finishing at the end of December."

Silence..... silence.... silence....

I sat there staring blankly in front of me. Outside I probably looked like I'd just been turned into a statue by the Queen of Narnia. Inside I felt like I was standing beside a roundabout that was spinning fast trying to get on but unable to get my stepping right to jump onto the moving ride. It was like I had been frozen in time. Her words were floating there in front of me but I couldn't take them in. I heard what she said, I just couldn't get my head around it. In a way, it's probably that I didn't want to get my head around it because letting that sink in would mean feeling the emotions that it would bring. I wanted to push it away and pretend I hadn't heard her.

T talked a bit about the options for support for me when she is gone. I couldn't really take it in either. I was still struggling to believe what she had just said. Eventually I asked: "Did you just tell me that you're leaving at the end of December?" I wanted to ask her if she could just keep saying it over to me so that I might be able to absorb the information. I felt like I had become one dimensional. I was simply a cardboard cut-out of myself with the ability to hear but not process. I knew the others were gone. It was like a total shutdown... just cardboard Candy desperately trying to put some information into a depth that didn't exist at that point. I could see her in my mind's eye with the information in her hands, trying to push it into her brain but her hand just going through and out the other side of the flat, cardboard head. So the information sat there, in her hands... it filled up the room but couldn't penetrate through to me on any real level.

I don't want to sound like a drama queen: as T reminded me, she will be coming back eventually. It's just that, T leaving is really, really, really fucking bad. This happened to me before; the first psychologist I saw left after I saw him for three months and I was devastated. I mean, devastated. I don't remember many times in my life as hard as that time. I was a mess. I didn't want to meet T and start again with her. I was so gutted that the person I had started to trust had left and to start again with someone else was horrible. Well, I think in the end I was better off with T, but I didn't know that at the time and if I had known I don't think it would have helped much anyway. But now, I have been with T for nearly three years. Not three months; three years! How much worse could it be this time? Am I going to fall apart again? Will I need to stop work again? 

Or will I be OK, because she is coming back isn't she? It's just, I don't believe that she will, despite what she says. I don't believe promises like that. I don't trust that she will come back. Or if she does, maybe she won't want to take me on again. Maybe she'll have been happy to get rid of me and want horrible new psychologist to keep me. Maybe horrible new psychologist will tell me there's nothing wrong with me and I'll have been discharged by the time she comes back and will be like this forever.

I could give you a list of reasons why it's fucking bad that she's going and I may do so, but not today, you'll be relieved to hear.