January 7, 2009

This is so amazing. Be sure to watch it all the way to the end (its 8 minutes.)

Posted by pilgrim at 9:29 PM | Comments (0)

January 10, 2009

Today is the 1 year anniversary of when Sharon left me. Us.
There is a part of my heart that is aching badly, because I miss her so much. But I have changed so much in the past year... I am a different person than I was 1 year ago. I am not the person that Sharon judged and decided she wanted nothing to do with anymore. And that is her loss. If she would have stuck around, given me the chance I asked her for, she would have seen the changes I told her were coming. But she didn't. If she would give me another chance, she would see that I am so different, and that things would be very different than they were before. If she would just give me the chance.
Today I am trying to start over again. To regain a new life and become a new me, even if it means doing it all on my own, just me and God.
2008 was hard for me from the moment it started til it ended. All the whole year I kept thinking, "This is a hard year." But now its over. And now I am thinking "THIS is a good year." Now I have a new chance to move on and start over. I survived my rough, awful year. All sorts of things happened last year. For months I was lost in nightmares and endless ruminating over what I had done so wrong to make Sharon, who said she wouldn't leave me, to hurt me this way so badly. I lost 2 friends to breast cancer. One of my students died. A student broke my arm. There were all sorts of changes at work. I left my job that I loved. There were family problems. My husband got MRSA. I lost friends.I lost so much weight and got so sick that I had to go back inpatient. And those are just the highlights of the lousy stuff.
But it was a learning year. At 1st I thought, surely God had abandoned me, had made all this bad stuff happen to punish me, and was up in Heaven on his throne laughing at me. I had been bad somehow, and this was my punishment, and I since I couldn't trust Sharon, I couldn't trust anyone else, certainly I couldn't trust God. God had let this happen. God had let Sharon leave me and hurt me.
Except that wasn't true. What I learned was that God was there through everything. That my trials were not there to weaken me and leave me to die, but there to strengthen me and show me how to live better. That God was calling me to Him, calling me back to Him alone. I learned that everything that happens is part of a good plan that he has for me, because he is good and loving and everything that God does is good and loving. And so much more. I learned to look for the positive. And I learned to speak positively about things, even the hard things. I learned to thank God for all things, even the things that happen that I don't like.
Do I miss her? God, YES. Do I want Sharon back? Desperately. Does it still hurt? Achingly so. But my God is greater than these problems. I am learning to have hope again. Life will be okay again someday. Life IS okay...now. I am blessed NOW. I am grateful for every small thing these days. Hot, clean water. A safe house. A safe ride to work on a busy highway. Getting to work on time. A soft bed to sleep in. That God keeps my family safe and healthy. Food in the cupboard. Kind e-mails from people. Sunshine this morning when my husband and I took the dogs on a hike. That I am not in the same place I was in a year ago today. The way the baby rubs her face and head when she wakes up from a nap, and smiles at me.

God is good...all the time.

Posted by pilgrim at 12:57 PM | Comments (2)

January 28, 2009

Sharon,
I am angry with you. I am angry at you for the lousy way you ended therapy with no warning. For calling me in your office and just ending it with no preparation.I don’t care what your perception of it was. The way you did it was WRONG and caused even more severe PTSD and a no therapist or therapy should ever do that. Therapist friends of mine have been appalled at how you did that and yes I told them exactly the things that led up to ending therapy and your letter you wrote and what happened and made sure you sounded like the one who did everything right, and they were still appalled and how badly you did that. I am angry at how I spend years bending over backwards to do everything you asked me to do, even doing things I was uncomfortable with or didn’t believe in, to make you happy and hopefully “keep” me in therapy, but it didn’t do any good and you rejected me anyway. I am so angry that nothing I ever did was good enough for you. I am angry that I tried so hard to accept all the things you did and said and yet I had to continually jump through hoops or be threatened with “I won’t see you anymore if you don’t do this.” That wasn’t fair.

I am so angry that you rejected me and especially that you rejected Mae. I am so angry that even a year later I still have nightmares over that night you ended therapy. I am so angry that you don’t seem to even be aware, or even CARE, about what you caused or did to me or to the inside kids. And I know you probably WONT—and that HAS to be okay—and I’m so angry that it has to be that way. You KNEW the abuse we all went through, you knew the immense fears or rejection, you knew what our worse fears were, and yet you went ahead and did the exact same thing anyway. I am so mad at you for doing that. I am so angry that those inside kids trusted you so much and were talking to you and were making so much progress, and that didn’t seem to matter to you at all. You just dumped it all, everything that we were doing. I am so angry that you have information and secrets about my whole life, and you get to keep them. I feel that you just completely rejected that totally precious gift we gave you.

I am so angry that all those things we worked on for 7 years in therapy just got left hanging. I am so angry that you just seem to think that all that work can be picked up by another complete stranger, when you’re the one we trusted with all those secrets and stories that won’t ever be told again because you know how hard they were to tell you the 1st time to someone like you that we trusted. I am so angry at you for just throwing that trust we had in you back in our face and saying “I’m done.” I am so angry that you don’t even get it. I am so angry that after that day, most of the inside people went away and since then it’s been just Mae and I. I miss them sometimes. I am angry that you hurt them so badly that they would just leave. I am angry at you because Mae still has nightmares about you and that some nights she still just wakes up and cries because she “just wants Sharon” and nothing else consoles her and I hate telling her that you are not coming back.

I am so angry that you said you would have an ending session with the kids, and then you changed your mind. Your promises were so important to the kids. Then you completely discounted their feelings and everything—EVERYTHING you ever told them. I am so mad at you for making so many promises like that you “weren’t going anywhere” and then you LEFT. I don’t care what YOU want to call it. I don’t care what kind of therapeutic terminology you want to wrap around it to make yourself feel better. YOU LEFT US. That is the truth. You broke our heart.

I am angry because you have information I need, medical and psychological, and I have no way of getting it. And I feel like I can’t move on. You ignore my e-mails and you ignore my phone calls and I am so mad at you for that because if you keep on ignoring me I don’t know how in the world I will ever get the information I need. It must be so nice for you to just be able to so easily sweep someone out of your life.

I am angry at you for that night you called 911. You said you tried to call T. Did you know that actually the phone never rang at our house? I don’t know if you accidently called the wrong number or what, but it wasn’t here you called. I am angry at you for giving up on me. If you would have hung in there another couple of weeks last January you would have seen some different things things start happening but you didn’t give me the chance to even tell you and then you wouldn’t listen. I am angry that I have lost over a year of my life because of what happened with you. I am angry that I still have nightmares about you.

I am angry that I still worry all the time about you and wonder what you think when you probably don’t ever think about me or care about me at all. I am angry that I can’t ever even think about the good things that happened in therapy with you because it makes me too sad. I am angry that after you left, Mae put all her toys away. I am angry that Mae still cries about you and asks for you. I am angry that I still pray for you and ask God to bless you. I am angry that I spent most of the year starving and suicidal because of what happened. I am angry that I have to fight so hard to even get some semblance of a life back after you left. Of course it was a mistake that I ever made anyone so important in my life that losing you would completely devastate me. That was a lesson I learned to never make anyone important except God. Over a year later I still trust no one except God. I have had to fight hard to make a lot of changes this year. I have had to fight immensely hard just to pick up and try to get life started again, on my own.

I look back on 7 years and I realize what a pain I must have been to you. How needy I was. I found some of my old letters to you and I realize, man, was I ever high-maintenance back then. My mind was so confused. I am so sorry for the time and trouble I took. I cannot imagine needing 2 hours of therapy a week now. Maybe an hour every couple of weeks now. I am really sorry. But that is not what this letter is about. I am so tired of beating myself up for everything I did wrong and I try not to do that anymore. Even if you don’t ever forgive me, at least God has. I don’t live in the past anymore (except this damn thing with you, which is the only thing I can’t seem to move on from, because I can’t talk to you about it and I need to…but I guess I will have to figure out a way to move on from it on my own.)
Of course I have learned lessons. I have grown up the past year. I had to learn a lot of things the hard way. I have had 3 friends die and so didmy favorite student. I NEEDED YOU and you weren't there. A student broke my arm and I quit my job. I have a baby to take care of. I am a completely different person than I was when you knew me.

I want so much to come to your office, and tell you what this past year has been like and what I have learned. I don’t know if you care. Or if you have thought of me a minute since last January. There is still a part of me that thinks this has all been a bad dream and that one of these days I will wake up, and it’ll be Thursday at 5:00 and time to go back to your office and things will be right again. I hope some day you will talk to me again.
Anyway…that’s all. I wish you had never done this. I expected so much more from you, I believed in you and I thought that you believed in me. I loved how we worked together and no one can ever take your place. I thought you thought the same. I wish I hadn’t been so incredibly wrong.
Pilgrim

Posted by pilgrim at 5:20 PM | Comments (2)