I'm in a nest

My heart is hurting a lot tonight, as I watch tomorrow creep up on me and I can't stop it. Today was big and hard. Saying goodbye today was intense, even if it was a goodbye I wanted to say. The idea of saying a goodbye I really don't want to say, to the most helpful support, feels like too much for one snowflake right now

😞

I'm so so sad @Former-Member and I can't change it or fix it 😞 If I had a eleventy million dollars I could. Can I tell you something that just sucks so much? (I won't wait for a yes here, sorry). On a technicality, I am not eligible for VOC funding without a big fight. And I'm too traumatised to fight it without it being unsafe for my broken brain. I have so much respect for what you're doing with the NDIS application. I can't do it with this and that hurts me heaps.

I'm completely swamped with heart hurty pain, so I'm going to get my blanket and try to sleep, even though I don't want to because that will mean waking up to it being tomorrow. Thanks for listening and for getting it and being here bookish. Hope the night is ok enough for you and Edie-Cat.

It's tomorrow now. I feel a teeny less intensely feely after having a big cry last night. I think it will come back again, but right now I have coffee and the birds are doing their bird thing, and it's and quiet and still here. Right now it is ok.

I will work out some words to talk about why this goodbye hurts later but for now I wanted to say good luck with your super tough appointment this morning @Former-Member. You definitely could complain (aka share/vent/spill/grab a bucket) if you wanted to. It's super tough for you this morning too and that matters too.

I worry (in an anxiety at extreme level) about Noodle and Mouse getting out too. Being stuck inside a hot house without being able to open the windows, is sucky. Edie-Cat is lucky to have you, which i know you don't feel sometimes.

Hope some kind of rest happened for you last night bookish.

@Maggie - one of the hardest times to ride alongside someone I think, is when there is nothing you can say or do to take the pain away. To be willing to be with someone in their pain, when you know there is nothing that will make it better, is so hard. It makes the pain less painful for me when people do that. Thank you 💗

@Phoenix_Rising thank you. Super thank you. There is no other way to look at this except that it sucks. Any attempt to reframe that would hurt my soul unless it was a reframe I co-created with someone by choice and probably to have a laugh. Today is a great chance for me to practice self-soothing skills (I am laugh crying while saying that). I had a few gigantic cries. We may have been doing that at the same time together but not. Grief hurts my throat and my heart and my tummy and it is where I am today. Thank you for meeting me where I am. I really hope that your muddle is less muddled today.

I need to write about this goodbye here. It will be long and I don't expect anyone to read through.

Over lots of years I have worked with lots of people and have been very lucky to have a very strong therapeutic connection with a couple. One of those people was a social worker who I met about 2 and a half years ago and worked with for a year. She was fresh out of uni and I was her first client. I remember seeing her at the door of our house for the first time, standing next to someone else, and my mind went straight to thinking "you have no idea what you're walking in to here". Later on we had a laugh about how she was given our case because on paper it looked simple and easy (it was definitely not). We did her first suicide safety plan together and the first and only one I have ever signed, her first 'report' to safety people, legal stuff, LF stuff, study stuff, trauma healing stuff etc. She also spent time playing with the LF, which is not something I allow unless I really, really trust someone, but it was something that was heaps of fun and meant a lot to us. She was honest and didn't pretend she had all the answers, and respected that I was capable of seeking many myself. We worked through it together and built a very strong relationship and the work we did was life changing for me. She used to say lots "we've got this" and I trusted her. She also said "I've got this" about things she needed to do that I couldn't do, and I trusted her with them too. She never let me down.

She was the very first person in about eight years of seeking help while managing a storm, to recognise (almost instantly) that the storm was behind my mess and give me the safety and time to talk about it. She didn't freak out, she didn't use it against me, she took it seriously and she believed me. She then walked beside me while I faced the storm and tried to change it's path. When our time was up she left me with the confidence to know that if I ever needed bring it to an end, I would. She left my world with a "you've got this" and I've held on to that. This is why this is one of the most helpful things someone I trust and believe can ever say to me. It gives me goosebumps when people here say it to me. My world was definitely better after having worked with her.

Shortly after our time ended something happened that I knew was too far and too much, and that's exactly what I did. I called it and the big bang was the result. This person was one of the two most helpful helping people for me. Because I have a bit of a not-totally-shattered-but-definitely-wonky attachment thing happening (which is something I don't like talking about as it is another thing that's been used against me in relation to a storm) this person is connected to the second most helpful helping person who I have to say goodbye to today, which right now feels like a double hit of hurt. My goodbye today will be to someone who was as great at working with me as my life changing social worker.

When we were whisked away and out of reach of everyone including support networks, it sunk in that I was in enormous trouble and would need to find someone to walk with me through it. I remembered that my social worker had a supervisor who I'd met a few times and also connected really well with, who encouraged my social worker to work with me in the way she did but who hated the system so much, she left to go into private practice. She was the other person standing at the door of our house on that first day. I easily found her through a quick search (and maybe a quiet hint) and discovered that she was practicing in a way that meant we could work together even when I couldn't work with pretty much anyone. She's the first person I called on for support when I was so incredibly alone and lost in between the big bang happening and entering the refuge. She stuck by me through what has been the very hardest thing I have ever gone through. She's been on the other end of my screen and phone while I have been in a scary unit, a horrible refuge, a dodgy motel room, a break place and a house that isn't right. She sat with me while I was in enormous pain knowing that it was not safe for me to be referred to big catt scaries even though it was risky for her, and I appreciated that so much. She took a risk and a chance because she believed in me, and the fact that she did and I could feel that, instantly lowered that risk. She's seen me in all kinds of states and I've felt comfortable being in them around her. She respects and encourages my 'bad ass' exterior (the same one that gets me called a f.... c... from men in utes, or a lesbian as if that's a bad thing from a man I made babies with) and understands that it is a shield to protect a very feely, vulnerable, fragile and sensitive inside from a world that can and has been be brutal. She's practiced incredible patience as a professional in a talking industry with someone who couldn't talk about things for a long time, and sometimes couldn't talk at all (and sometimes talked lots of things that made no sense). I trusted her also and she never let me down, also. Because of the VOC cruel twist, we've had to pull funding from all kinds of places to be able to work together for as long as we have and I am so thankful for that. But it has run out now.

I will extra 'bad ass' my outside today and also sit in the privacy of my home, wrapped in a pink fluffy blanket and baring my insides to someone safe one final time (unless I find eleventy million dollars) before a goodbye this morning and I think it's going to hurt in a way that I haven't felt since I didn't get to say goodbye to all of the people I left in my world last year.

I know it isn't all lost and that what I have been given through our relationship will stay with me forever. I still have a psychologist and I value our work together a lot, and I have a mental health worker who is very helpful and who is working hard with me to build a strong supportive relationship, even though it started off very shakily. We're getting there and we will hunt for another supportive someone of this kind when I am ready. But it's not the same as having a connection I can truly feel and believe in though, and those connections with support people seem rare in my experience, and so hard to find. I have felt so held, so believed in, so understood and so felt during our time together. We've shared tears and lots of laughs and I've told her things I haven't spoken about to anyone before. She's been so careful with and respectful of my snowflakey banana head, while gently encouraging me in helpful ways. She speaks and listens in a way that feels good for my broken heart, mashed brain and shattered soul, and she's helped me find and hold on to tiny glimmers of fight and hope. My life is definitely better for having worked with her too.

I knew it couldn't last forever and I have been preparing for this goodbye for a while. But it does hurt in a big way and I think I might be very sad about this for a while.

Thanks again to anyone who read another CheerBear essay and who understands (or is trying to). I will take a big breath and log off now to do what I need to do to make it through. I think that's flowers this morning.