Dear friend
I wish I were braver. I wish I had the courage to tell you what really goes on in my mind. I wish I could tell my therapist just how painful all this is without being told affirmations like “I am enough”. I don't want empty words, I want to stop hurting. Why can't anyone make it stop hurting?
I've made some progress in therapy, the many years of therapy, but nowhere near as much as I should have by this point. Do you remember how I said I struggle to empathise if I don't actively suffer with you? I'm starting to realise that may be more true about myself than I initially thought. I'm starting to understand the reason why I've not made as much progress as I should - and it's because I can't be honest with my therapist, or my doctor, or my psychologist, about what is truly going on.
I don't mean that in the “oh but it's hard to open up” kind of way (though I'd be lying if I said that wasn't part of it). I mean in the genuine “I actually forget how the pain feels when I'm not actively feeling it” kind of way. Truth be told, I spend many evenings in full-blown panic attacks, crying myself to sleep, hoping that tomorrow will be better. But by the time I walk into an appointment, I've had to spend the past hour mentally preparing myself and composing myself to function as a human being. But that process of calming myself to be able to attend my appointment seems to completely erase my ability to communicate why I needed to attend in the first place. The emotional memory gets wiped. I may have spent the past night crying and panicking and breaking down, but all I can really say in a session is “had a panic attack. wasn't great. I'm okay right now” because - right now - I am.
I'm not actively trying to lie to them, I just cannot possibly describe the absolute fuckery that went down last night because I spent the past hour mentally preparing myself to be here today. I can describe in a clinical, factual manner “I had a panic attack. I cried. I felt like shit” - but I can't… I can't clearly describe how that felt after the fact. I fail to find the words that would convey exactly what it is I deal with. What I have never done in therapy is turn up and say “last night I felt like my entire world was falling apart, I couldn't breathe, I'm so overwhelmed with guilt and grief and stress and fear that it's becoming impossible to function day-to-day because all I can think about is how much of a shitty person I am and how I've pushed away the people I love and now I'm so alone and broken and it's all my fucking fault because I've never been able to TELL YOU ANY OF THIS”.
That. That's what I need to say. That's how it feels. It's how it feels to go at this without you. It's not your fault, you did nothing wrong. It's me. I suffer from extreme attachment and abandonment issues that it's practically impossible for me to do anything for myself right now. And that is something I need to work on… so that I can be there for you. I get it. How can I be there for you when I can't even be there for myself? And how can I be there for myself when I can't even fathom how to tell my therapist exactly what it is I'm dealing with every single day of my life?
So I have a plan. I'm going to start sharing my private journal entries with my therapist. The entries I write when I'm in crisis mode. The words I spew onto the page when everything feels like too much to burden. She needs to see exactly what goes on in my mind at that moment because it's the only way she'll get a true and genuine glimpse at the real me. The me I should have shown her all along, and sought help for years ago. She needs to know what is wrong with me because I don't know what's wrong with me and I'm angry. I'm angry at myself for not taking this as seriously as I should have. Hell, you're angry at me for not taking this as seriously as I should have. And I'm disappointed in myself that it took this long to understand what the bloody hell you've been saying all this time.
I need help. I'm going to ask for it - properly.
I just hope that you can forgive me.