Deeper down the rabbit hole part 2 (everything is flipped)

Continued from part one……….. (And trigger warning for talk of suicide ideation, negative coping skills, and detailed talk of childhood sexual abuse. Oh, and sweating. Yeah, I’ve been a pretty dark place……so just please be careful reading, okay?)

I walk out of Bea’s office. I can’t feel my legs, so I’m somewhat surprised that they work. I can hear her trying to get me to wait, to take a breath. She’s asking me what just happened, what upset me so much? I can’t answer. I’m a little afraid she is going to stop me, tell me I’m not allowed to leave, that I have to stay. She doesn’t stop me, or tell me I can’t leave, and in the moment, I am relieved. Later, I am hurt. I wonder why I didn’t matter enough for her to stop me? But then I realize that Bea would never knowingly do anything that would use her power in this relationship to make me do something I clearly didn’t want to do. 

It’s not until much later that night that I realize she is leaving for her trip, and that I won’t see her for a whole week. I’m upset about this, but I won’t email her, or text or call. I half hope she will email me, to check on me, but I’m fairly certain she won’t do that. I choose to write to her in my journal, but then realize I’m out of notebooks, and so I grab a pad of blank paper to write on. I write to her, explaining how everything is flipped. I unleash all the confusion, agitation and chaos onto the paper. 

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Bea, 

Everything is flipped. Everything. It’s this big giant mess and I can’t fix it and nothing is okay, and I can not breathe. We’ve talked about it being abuse, that what he did hurt me, we’ve talked about nothing being the child’s fault, you have even said that no matter what the little girl instigated, it wasn’t her fault, that you would never blame her. But the little girl, and even the grown up has held onto this idea of it only being a game, no big deal, nothing harmful. I have held onto the idea that all of this was because he loved me. I thought, it meant it wasn’t so bad, it meant it wasn’t meant to hurt me, it meant he cared and loved me. I needed to believe he loved me. 

Here’s the thing. If he was playing our game with her, I wasn’t special, he didn’t love me. This is ruining everything. It’s ruining every story I told myself, every lie I have held onto. It wasn’t because I flirted, or instigated, or because he just loved me so much he could not help himself, or because he cared. If he had someone else there, was touching someone else then it was him, not me. And then I can not think or breathe any more at all because everything is spinning out of control. I had NO fucking control at all. It just changes everything. 

And flipped in the way you said. In the way you said and I got so mad and left. I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have left. Please don’t hate me. I was jealous, too. I hated that he was playing our special game with her. So when he told me that all 3 of us could be special friends, I said okay. I didn’t want to lose him. I’m bad. Really, truly bad. Disgusting. Evil. No better than he is. Omg what is wrong with me? How could I have just….ugh. Ugh. 

I HATE YOU for knowing this. You don’t get to just know. Why did you have to know. Figure it out? It’s not fair! I hate that you know. I can’t deal with this. It’s not real, it’s not real, it’s not real. 

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Thursday, and Friday, are spent in a dissociative daze. My nights are a mess of not sleeping and bad dreams, and during the day I’m too tired to function, and feeling as if I am being triggered constantly. On Saturday, hubby and I have a major fight. The awful thing is, it really wouldn’t be that big of a deal, except for the fact that we seem to continually have the same fight, over and over. It doesn’t even matter what it was about, or what started it, it doesn’t take long for our communication to go sideways, and things to get all muddled. I end up feeling really, really bad, lower than I have felt in a long time. If I could have been assured that Bea would respond to an email and that she would be present, I would have emailed her. If she had been in town, I would have emailed her and asked if she could call me the next day (Sunday). Instead, I did neither of those things. I wrote her a letter on my pad of blank paper. 

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Saturday night 9:00pm
Hi Bea, 

I really hate you right now. You aren’t here. I hate you for not being here. How could you make me trust you and believe in you and now you aren’t here?!?! 

I want you to be here. I want to know that if I sent an email right now, I’d get a real response at some point tomorrow. And I want to go to therapy on Monday. But I can’t trust I’ll get a real response because of that one time, and I can’t go to therapy on Monday because you aren’t here. 

I DO NOT need you. I don’t need anyone. I don’t need anyone to be okay, I’m always okay on my own, so don’t even worry. I want to be able to write all the yuck out and get a real time response. Because this is just a lot to hold onto and I’m just so triggered right now. 

You know what? I didn’t want this whole relationship nonsense to matter, remember? I told you, from the beginning, that all this relationship shit did not get to be important, that I was not in therapy for relationship crap, AND THIS IS WHY! You gave me stupid fucking high expectations for what I might deserve, for what relationships could be, and then I wanted some of that in my marriage and somehow now hubby is threatening to leave, and you are gone and I’m alone. So no. YOU ARE WRONG. Relationships are bad. Relationships are not okay. Relationships are not hurt. People shouldn’t be trusted. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. You were so, so wrong. I hate you. I quit therapy. I quit, okay? I quit. I quit, I quit. I can not be who hubby wants right now and do therapy. So I quit. 

~Alice 

Sunday 3:30am

Bea,

I’m sorry. Please don’t leave. I don’t quit. I’m sorry I said I hate you. I don’t hate you and I need you and I just want you to come back. Please don’t quit me. I am really sad right now because you are not here and I’m really lonely. Come back soon, okay? 

~the little girl

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I sent a text to my friend Reagan. She works nights and so she did text me back and we chatted that way for a bit. That helped me calm down enough that a slept for a few hours. 

To be continued……….