Grieving

Written the same day:

I think the session with Erica was a good one.  I cried a lot, didn’t say very much.  Mostly about wanting a new dog & grieving Bella.  Also grieving that I hadn’t really been able to take in how much she loved me until just before she died.  Erica asked about Tiny.  I checked.  Tiny is grieving too.  Don’t know what about.  (Now that I’m writing it down I suspect it’s grieving because she didn’t know she was loved.)  Sat quietly with her until some little piece nudged “You aren’t doing anything.”  Told Erica.  She said it wasn’t nothing.  I sighed — getting that it was OK to do “nothing.”  Erica said that I needed to slow down to calm my nervous system.  I think this is the first time I haven’t rushed into telling her a story.

Written the next day

Feeling dizzy and lost.  It’s chilly in here and 9° outside.  I just want to lie down with Muffy.  Holding him tightly now.

What happened?  I think it was a good session with Erica, but again I was exhausted when I got home.  This morning I’m feeling bereft and lonely.  Yesterday I told Erica I was doing OK with empty days, but this morning doesn’t feel OK.

So what happened with Erica?  I told her about the pain of spring — the earth waking up and I’m still frozen.  Also told her I was really wanting a dog.  And the grief that I wasn’t able to take in how much Bella loved me until the end.  Here come the tears again.  I guess that’s big.  And Tiny was in grief too, when I went to write about it her grief was also that she didn’t know she was loved.  I guess I have a lot of grieving to do.

Thinking that I was loved and didn’t know it.  So painful.  My heart feels empty and cold the way it felt when I was abandoned again again.

Yes I think the pain and the confusion are because of the realization that many people love me, and have loved me, and I couldn’t take it in.  If I have any regret about my life, that’s it.  And yet, I don’t see that I had much choice.

It took me awhile after the session to really get how sad I am that I wasn’t able to take in the love that was there for me.  I think this is only possible now that I’m starting to be able to see myself as lovable.  It makes me so so sad.  How different my life would have been.  But the first thing I learned from mother was that I wasn’t lovable.  I tried and tried to do the right thing to make her happy, but she was never happy with me.  Finally, the youngest part of myself, who needed to be aware of being loved in order to be aware of herself at all, had to split off and close herself up so nothing could get in.  Mother’s poisonous energy was too toxic for her to take in, so she had to block out everything.

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