Showing Up

You know… for once I actually know what I should talk about in therapy.

But it’s also the last thing I want to touch.

Losing my aunt.

Losing my cat.

Having a therapist I was in the middle of trauma work with choose to dip out by email.

The fact that I’m still grieving the first therapist I ever worked with.

Nope.

Don’t want to go there. Not today. Not tomorrow. Not right now.

There’s this other part of me that keeps whispering that maybe I’m not cut out for EMDR. That maybe it won’t help me. That maybe I’m too tangled, too guarded, too fragile/weak for it to not destabilize me.

And then there’s the other fear.

The one that stings more than anything else.

I don’t know how to work with someone who has no idea how hard I had to fight to get here.

How many times I had to force myself to show up when everything in me wanted to disappear.

How many days I was hanging by a thread, but still showed up to the therapy session anyway.

She has no idea how much it takes for me to let someone see me.

To let someone know me.

To let someone matter.

And that’s the part I crave and hate at the same time.

Wanting connection but being terrified of the cost of it.

I’m not dumb.

I know therapy doesn’t work unless I take the risk.

Unless I let myself be seen enough to feel safe.

Unless I let the door crack open just enough for someone to actually get to know me.

But what happens when I’m too much and she leaves too?

That’s the question that sits in my throat.

That’s the thing I don’t want to talk about in therapy tomorrow.

And ironically, it’s probably the thing I should talk about most.

Sometimes, if I’m being honest, I miss L so much it knocks the air out of me.

I keep wishing I had known how to do things better back then.

Like maybe if I had understood myself more, or handled my panic differently, or not spiraled so hard… maybe I wouldn’t be here.

Maybe I wouldn’t be starting over again with someone who doesn’t know any of the history I fought my way through.

It’s stupid, I know.

But that’s where my brain goes.

That if I had just been better, I wouldn’t have lost something/someone that meant so much to me.

But then I remember:

I didn’t know what I didn’t know.

I was drowning in attachment and trauma and trying to pretend I wasn’t.

I was doing the best I could with what I had.

And she saw that. I know she did.

But I can still wish that I knew better… because my heart still wishes for her to be the one holding me in this.