Monthly Archives: March 2014

Scattered Pearls

15 Saturday Mar 2014

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IMG_299554994445707My husband always bought me Chanel No. 5;  he started doing this when we were dating, and continued for about ten years into our marriage.  To this day, I can’t walk by and see it on a department store counter without feeling a certain kind of pain.  And then, one year, I opened a bottle of Elizabeth Arden’s 5th Avenue on Christmas morning.  I wondered why the sudden change… until I discovered that he had bought two identical bottles of perfume that year.  Shortly after that, I found several other receipts, for gifts I didn’t receive or open.  Smart man, yes?

No.

There is so much shame and embarrassment that comes with divorce.  It would be nice if there was a safe, quiet place where we could go and heal.  Divorce also comes with a lot of upheaval;  we lost our home, and every place we’ve rented since has been sold by the landlord almost as soon as we unpacked and got everything set up the way we want it.  Suddenly, it was all gone.  There is a saying that “God is a God of second chances.”  With God, we get a clean slate, so to speak.  Not so with people.  Sometimes they’re just gone.  Sometimes we lose our place of hope and safety.  Or we lose our voice, instead of finding it.

In the very beginning of counseling, I had an extremely difficult time trusting that my counselor was honestly not going to just quit and disappear.  After everything I had just been through with my husband, I just did not believe that she wouldn’t do the same thing, and I wasn’t about to go through anything like that again.  I was already extremely sick, and tired, and it just seemed like to much effort to go digging into the past.  Nor did I want to dig it all up, and then risk being left alone with all of it.  I told her that I was afraid I would ‘come apart’, and all of the pieces would scatter, and I would never in a million years be able to get it all back together.  When I said that, she did the most wonderful thing;  she left the room, and then came back with a small package of Skittles.  She opened the bag, and let the candy fall all over the floor between us.  Then she got out of her chair, and knelt down, and started picking them up, one at a time.  She looked up at me and said:  “And if that happens, we will pick up every one of those pieces, together.”  When she had them all, she sat back down.  She had heard me.

Some time after that, she gave me a small, beautiful bracelet made of pearls.  She said that she was giving it to me so that I would know that I could trust her, and that she would never just quit and give up on me, and walk away.  She said that she understood that I had a hard time believing her, and that I would learn over time that she could be trusted.  I loved my bracelet, and I finally believed her.  I did wear it, and it did help.  Had I known what would happen in the end, I would have handed it right back and left the room, but at the time, I really did believe her.  I think she did, too.  Unfortunately, things didn’t turn out the way she promised, and now all of those little pieces of my life are scattered everywhere, like little beads from a broken bracelet.  Most of this is all my own fault.  I wish I could go back, because there is so much I would do differently.  For the last couple of years, I have been trying to pick up all of those pieces by myself, without a counselor.  It isn’t going very well, mostly because  I didn’t get to take them all with me, the way you normally would when you finish counseling, in some kind of integrated whole.

After the horrible day in her office, the day she was so very angry because of my email, I waited and waited for her to call and say that what she did was wrong;  that she had made a mistake, and we would talk it out at my next appointment.  Instead, she called, and said that she would meet me at Panera Bread when she got out of work one night.  Why we met at Panera Bread, I will never know.  None of it made any sense, and still doesn’t.  I don’t know what the purpose of any of this is, and it’s all still such a confusing mess.  It hasn’t served any purpose, Godly  or otherwise, other than to make me wish I had never asked for help in the first place.  When we got there they were closing soon, so we didn’t have much time.  She explained somewhat hurriedly over coffee that she had read something in her devotional that morning, and that she took it to mean that God had given her an ‘out’ so to speak.  (That is not how she worded it, but is in essence what she was saying.)  She had brought a copy of it with her;  I read it, but didn’t see what it had to do with what had happened in my session.  I still don’t.  I felt like I was watching our conversation from the ceiling, or another part of the room;  the whole thing was surreal.  When she was done saying what she had to say, she promised that nothing would change, she “would still be there” (I haven’t yet figured out where) and that we would be friends, and have coffee, but we just wouldn’t “do therapy.”  And just like that, she was free.

She kept a part of her promise, for a while, and even sent an email on my birthday.  We were actually going to go for coffee (she said) but before that happened, she read a couple of the posts I had written about how hurt I was.  I regret it, but don’t know what to do about it.  There’s nothing anyone can do.  Needless to say, everything has changed, and all I want is to go back and finish my therapy.  It’s not about her, it’s about me.  I want a second chance.  Now we are not even friends.  She just disappeared.

I was heartbroken when we left Panera Bread.  I also sent the bracelet back to her, but can’t remember if it was before or after Panera.  She told me that as she took it out of the envelope, it broke, and the pearls scattered.  She said that she took it as a sign that the counseling just “couldn’t stay together any more.”  As though it were proof that God had let her off the hook.  I took it to mean that she had broken her promise, and that I was right in the first place;  it was a sign that she really couldn’t be trusted after all.

Do you know what it was a sign of?

That if you wear a bracelet every single day, for years, but never get it re-strung, the elastic will eventually break, and the beads will go all over the place.

That’s all it means.  Nothing prophetic, overly spiritual, or profound.  It’s not a sign from God that it’s okay to break a promise, it’s just a sign that you shouldn’t send fragile items through the mail.  It’s a sign that you can’t trust a piece of jewelry to keep a human being from acting like a human being.  They get angry, they blow up, and they hurt the people they say they love.  And then they leave.

That’s all.

I miss my bracelet, and I want it back.  And if I had honestly thought for a moment that she would keep it, I wouldn’t have sent it to her.  I only meant to remind her, in a not quite so harsh and hurtful way, that she had made a promise.  If I hadn’t sent that email, none of this would have happened, and things wouldn’t be as they are today.  It really was a pretty bracelet.

I will never see that again, either.

Wittenberg Revisited

08 Saturday Mar 2014

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profile_236971163_75sq_1350264225There is another aspect of this story that, while embarrassing to me, is partly what was behind some of my hurt and anger.  Before the day of the “Jezebel” session, earlier in the year, we had talked one afternoon about the possibility of my sharing the office with her on a part-time basis at some point in the future.  (My counselor, not Jezebel.)  I knew that I would be graduating soon, and would then be working on my Master’s degree, which would take me about a year or so, because I had worked hard to maintain my advanced standing.  (Which only means that you’ve maintained a certain grade point average in your classes.  I did, until November, later that year.)  She said that she would talk to her landlord about it.  This would have worked well for me, because I wanted to only work part-time while finishing school, and I could have worked around my classes much more easily than I could have if I worked for someone else.  It would work perfectly for her, she said, because she wanted to work fewer days per week, and then eventually retire.  I thought it would also help with some of my anxiety, to be able to meet with people in a safe place that I was already familiar with.  Because I’m also a writer, I have an obsession with desks, and I have grown to love hers.  It is the absolute perfect writing desk, and I would have been unbelievably happy working in such beautiful surroundings, and just being free to be me. A very happy me.  Not only that, but I would have considered it both a privilege and an honor, as I look to her not only as my counselor, but also as a mentor.  As an example.  It meant a lot that she took me seriously, even knowing all that she did about me.  (We don’t take our best selves to therapy.)

I left the appointment so very, very happy that day, but didn’t want to bring it up again, just in case she had for some reason changed her mind.  I didn’t want to be disappointed.  At the end of one of my sessions a few weeks later (I think) we were leaving her office one night, and I finally got up the courage to ask if she had really meant what she said about sharing her office with me.  I didn’t want to risk the embarrassment of being told no, or of being rejected, after getting my hopes up.  As she reached to turn off the light in the waiting room, she looked at me directly and said “Well I don’t know;  are you going to be a therapist?”  I said “Yes, I am”, and she said “Then yes, I meant it.”  And so we left.  Again, so very happy.  For someone who likes to know two years ahead of time what is going to happen tomorrow;  who craves structure and security, I felt like I finally didn’t have to worry.  At least one problem in my life was solved, or so I thought.

Some weeks later, I brought it up again during a session, and instantly saw by the look on her face that she had changed her mind.  She said she was sorry, but she had “been advised not to do that.”  She did not say by whom, or why. Only that she had decided to give the office to someone else.  My office;  my safe space.  Desk and all.  I had long since become quite attached to that particular piece of furniture, and to everything else in the room that had grown so familiar over time.  With all of our moving, and constant upheaval since losing our home, her office was an anchor in a never-ending nightmare.  A literal oasis in the middle of every week; in the middle of a very traumatic and disrupted life.  I was crushed.  Both ashamed and heart-broken.  And so embarrassed, for being such a fool as to think anyone would have ever taken me seriously, or thought that I was capable of doing anything like that.  And, to be honest, I wanted so badly to be like her.  To be adult, and professional, and capable, and not so damned insecure.  I tried so hard to earn her respect and approval, but never could quite pull it off.  This may not be important to anyone else, but it is to me, even now.  Please don’t write and tell me why it shouldn’t be;  it won’t matter at all, nor would it make any difference.  It just is.

But I think this is partly what was underlying my insistence to set things right about the other matter, because I felt that people were talking about me, and didn’t know who, or why, or what was being said.  But mostly I felt that she had changed her mind, for some reason, because of some inadequacy in me, and that she didn’t really take me seriously as anything more than a client.  That she would never see me as anything but unhealthy and incompetent, and I knew this was partly my own fault.  I had said, and shared too much.  Trusted too much.  And now hated myself for it.  When we hate ourselves, or reject ourselves, we act funny.  We do act odd, and people do talk about us, and not usually with a great deal of grace or mercy.  We ruin our relationships, both personal and professional, and I had done both.  Hence, the “Jezebel” session.

Interactions like these are important, no matter how frustrating to both client and therapist. Therapy provides the perfect place to pull these things apart, and face them, no matter how difficult, because this is where the meat of all real therapy is.  How the client interacts in relationship with you is probably much the same as they do with others, and this is what they actually need help with- not the situation, or crisis that brings them into the room in the first place.  Unfortunately, this is also where therapists all too often throw up their hands and make a referral, in the desperate hope that a different counselor can clean up the mess they made in their own office.  Have you ever tried to clean up a mess made in one room while sitting in a different one?  Doesn’t work very well, and it’s not for someone else to do.  For a client who has a hard time speaking up and dealing with people, the relationship with the therapist provides the perfect opportunity to practice how to hang in there and talk about hard things, including anger, without running away, quitting, or altogether avoiding uncomfortable situations.  This is what results in true life-change, not just behavioral modification.  My normal pattern is to shut down, run away, and avoid the person who hurt me like the plague.  Instead of her using this situation as a way to help me learn a different way to do life, it ended up being a re-enactment of what I had already spent a lifetime doing.  I went to therapy to un-learn this, although I didn’t know it at the time.

We can’t, as therapists, run from and avoid transference and counter-transference;  we have to learn how to use it, because, as I said before, this is where the real work of therapy is.  (These are just important sounding clinical terms, courtesy of Freud:  transference represents the clients’ ‘stuff’, and counter-transference represents the counselors’ ‘stuff’.  It’s what we both bring to the table, and is a normal part of all true therapy.) Our perceptions of other people are filtered through the grid of our own past experiences, and we transfer both our opinions and our feelings when we interact with each other.  We make assumptions based on fears that are not necessarily unfounded.  To chalk everything up to client resistance is neither fair, nor true.  Counselors are not God;  the best ones realize this, and work with full awareness of their own humanity.  This is what creates the safe space required for life-changing  therapy.  Anything less cheats both, and limits God.

What counseling is about for the client, and what it’s about for the counselor are two completely different things.  If you’re going to help anybody, you need to understand that from the beginning.  Clients don’t care about your degrees, your awards, or your theoretical orientation.  They don’t care if you are Freudian, Rogerian, Bowenian, or a Martian.  They care that you care.  That you are a kind, honest, and wise person.  That you see the person paying you as having worth and value apart from their signed checks.  I, personally, do care however about your theological orientation, because as a Christian, I am not going to go for help to someone who is not well-grounded in scripture and serves the same God;  someone who understands both spiritual warfare and spiritual authority.  Unless, of course, all I’m looking for is practical help, such as how to balance my checkbook.  I’ve had to take a long, hard look (as we all do, at some point) at who I choose as to look up to and learn from.  Do we choose our mentors, or do they choose us?  I have a feeling it’s a bit of both;  helping others makes us feel good about ourselves, and makes us feel competent.  If we have any insecurity at all as counselors, it’s soothed and satiated by sitting  with a clipboard or a keyboard in front of someone who is looking to us for help.  And we keep those clients who make us feel that way, and get rid of the ones who don’t.

I have a pattern of looking up to certain people who have turned out to be false, dishonest, or harmful.  I don’t know why.  I don’t count my counselor as part of this group.  I learned a lot from her;  more than I ever did from school, and got what I call a back-door education.  I learned not only by being a student, but by being a client at the same time.  Of the two, I would have to say that I got more for my money from my counseling than I did from the university.  What was being taught to me in class was being experienced in weekly sessions;  you can’t put a value on that kind of education.  And you could tell many of the teachers hadn’t had it themselves, by the way they taught.  An exorbitant amount of  text-book theory, but very little common sense.  Not a whole lot of “how to help the person sitting in front of you.”  And an education that benefits you, but not your clients, is just not worth the time, or the money.  Remember;  most clients could care less about what is hanging on the wall of your office, no matter how pretty the frame is.

The person of the therapist is the therapy.  This part is essential.  If nothing else, remember that.  A degree simply means you’ve done your homework, checked all your boxes, and jumped through all the hoops required by the university.  It doesn’t mean you’re actually competent, nor are you necessarily even called, to be what the piece of paper and plaque on the door says that you are.  It doesn’t say what kind of person you are.  Do you cheat on your taxes?  Cheat on your wife?  If so, pick another line of work, please.  We don’t need, or want, to emulate people who are as unhealthy as we are.  Sometimes more so.

All that being said,  my heart changed after that appointment.  I can say that I was both defensive and difficult, (more so than usual) over trivial things that shouldn’t have mattered.  I lost both trust and respect for her, but never told her why.  And, I got severely depressed.  Even more so than I already was.  I still don’t think that any of this should have happened;  I still believe that ending my counseling was wrong, and I believe that it should be made right.  I think it honors God and defeats the enemy when we clean up our messes and stay the course.  I still think that what she originally said about sharing the office was right, and was the plan of God all along;  it would have been the natural outcome of all that had gone before.  I don’t think it belongs to someone else.  It’s just too late now to fix it, all because I sent that email way back in October.  I wish with all my heart I hadn’t sent it, and will possibly pay for that mistake for the rest of my life, but there is absolutely nothing I can do about it now.

She called that night, also, and apologized sincerely for having ever made the promise in the first place.  She said that she had never meant to mislead me in any way.  (She hadn’t;  I heard her clearly and correctly.  I don’t get happy easily, and certainly not without good reason.) She said that she was truly sorry for any misunderstanding.  And I believe she was.  But, it did change everything for me.  Nothing made any sense;  I had believed all along that it was what I was in school for, and what God was preparing me for.  Now I didn’t have a clue or a plan.  And my degrees didn’t make any sense any more.  Nothing did.  Or does.

Doubt like that makes the perfect open door for the enemy.  And I fell headlong through that doorway, and have been falling for the last three years.  The first two were a hazy blur of medication that did little but numb my brain, and the last has been a clear-headed journey through hell.  I’m sorry all this happened, and sorry for my part in it.  There is still so much more, because ten years is a long time.  But it’s late, or early, rather, and I’ve written myself into oblivion, and am going to bed.  The sun should be up soon.

Good early morning, people.

“I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go;  I will counsel you and watch over you.”    Psalm 32:8

Savage Wolves and Jezebels

06 Thursday Mar 2014

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Leighton, Frederic - Jezabel and Ahab - c.1863

Leighton, Frederic – Jezabel and Ahab – c.1863 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I want to explain what happened as I remember it, because I want this to be an accurate and truthful account of everything as much as is humanly possible.  If I misrepresent anything, or leave any part out, that has not been my intent, and I’m sorry.  I am not sure when all of this started, but will never forget, nor will I ever get over, how it all ended.

There were two women who used to go to my old church, the Chapel, back while I was going through my divorce.  They had both started attending my current church long after I did, although at different times.  They were also both clients of my pastoral counselor (I believe) and at the same time were also meeting with another leader on staff.  (The Blond Elder.)  I’m not sure why.  One of the woman was also a client at my place of employment, which was a local domestic violence agency.  She and I shared the same legal advocate.

One day, one of the women (who was the wife of my ex-husbands’ best friend at the time) called me at home, and said she had the other woman with her, and wanted her to talk to me because of a situation she was dealing with in her marriage.  Both women knew where I worked, and why and how my own marriage ended, so they thought I could help.  The other woman then got on the phone and proceeded to tell me what had occurred with her husband.  She also said that she was seeing my counselor, and had been told by her something to the effect of “If she just took her medicine, her husband wouldn’t do those things.”  This is the gist of what she said to me, although I honestly can’t remember her exact words.  I did not want to get involved AT ALL, because it sounded like a mess, and I didn’t want to be put in the middle, and risk my job or my counseling. So, I told her that whether she took a medication or not, what her husband did was wrong, and she needed to call the crisis line where I worked.  That is all that I said to her.  I didn’t malign my counselor;  in fact, I defended her, and said that I was sure that wasn’t what she meant (if she said it at all) and made it clear that I wouldn’t be put in a position of being in the middle.  I don’t know what the woman thought she heard, or where things went wrong, or who she said what to after we hung up, but somehow I guess it was conveyed as though I had told her not to take her medicine, and not to listen to my counselor, but to go to Vera House instead.

It’s not what I said at all.  I don’t believe she was lying;  I honestly think she was just too upset and too high-strung at the time to hear anybody clearly.  I certainly would never have told anyone not to take their medication.  However, I hung up and didn’t think any more of it until I got a call at work from one of the women, who told me that there was a meeting scheduled at the church “for 4:00 on Monday.”  She said that the two of them, myself, and my counselor, along with at least one of the elders and another staff member were going to be there, and that we were all in trouble.  (Me and the other two clients.)  Well, I worked, at the time, every week until 5:00 on Mondays, so it wouldn’t have been possible for me to be there even if someone from the church had called to see when I was available.  I hung up with the woman who called, and immediately called the church myself and found out that yes, this meeting was already scheduled, but neither my counselor nor anyone else had called to tell me about it.  Everyone else knew about it except me;  I’m not sure why.  Nor had anyone called to even see if any of this was true, or asked me what I actually did say.  It would have resolved the whole thing, and none of this would ever have happened.  One phone call.

So, I said to the woman who answered the phone that I had to work until 5:00 on Monday, and that I couldn’t possibly come to this meeting.  I also said it sounded like it would be a conflict of interests, and that I would have to ask our senior legal advocate at Vera House what to do, as she was also my advocate.  I was worried this would cause problems at work, and the whole situation had ‘conflict of interest’ and ‘confidentiality’ problems written all over it.  I didn’t want to lose my job, although I did shortly after, as a result of all of this.

You know that game where kids sit in a circle, and whisper a sentence into the ear of the person next to them, who then turns and whispers it to the next person, and so on around the circle until what the sentence repeated at the end is nowhere near what was originally said?  That’s what happened next.  As far as I can tell, what ended up being said to my counselor was “Stacey refuses to come to the meeting without a lawyer.”  I don’t know how this happened, or who turned it into that;  I only know what has been told to me, first by the blond elder, and later confirmed by my counselor. (All of which I wrote about in a previous post;  this is how all of that happened, and why the elder was telling people to stay away from me.  So she said, anyway.)

I wrote a letter to the elder, while still at work, and as soon as I left I drove to the church and asked to speak with her.  I went upstairs, and she read the letter while I sat there.  She agreed with some of it, but then said that there was no confidentiality when it came to my personal counseling and the church, and that they had “an open book policy”.  I said that my counselor was my privately paid service provider, and as such, any concerns involving me should be handled by her supervisor, herself and me, except in cases of informed consent, which I couldn’t give, because I hadn’t been informed.  I also made a copy for my counselor, and an extra one for the pastor, in case anyone ever asked exactly what I said.  I wanted to speak for myself.

She disagreed.

What hurt was that my counselor had never called in the first place to talk to me about any of this.  I don’t know why.  I only know it hurt.

I carried this hurt with me to my counseling, along with the letter for my counselor, because it was important to me to clear this up.  I knew it would affect  the counseling process, and didn’t want it to. I believed that anything we talked about openly could be dealt with, and resolved.  Healed.  I still believe this.

But, she refused to read the letter, and suddenly said she didn’t want to be involved, and that it wasn’t about her.  The problem was that she was the one who called the original meeting, so it did involve her, even though it wasn’t about her.

This became a problem, mostly because I wouldn’t let it go. This is how it happened that one day several months later (yes, I did drag this out that long) she asked “why she should believe me over other people who are more credible.”  And that stung.  I should have dropped it long before, but for reasons God and I alone understand, I didn’t.  And she was understandably frustrated, and angry.  At the end of that appointment (this was in early summer of 2010)  she turned to me at the door and said something to the effect of “You need to go home and look up the spirit of Jezebel, because you have that spirit all over you.”

I had no idea what she was talking about, but was embarrassed and sick over the whole thing.  It hurt like hell, and I made more and more mistakes at work, huge mistakes, and cried all the time, while sitting at the front desk.  My lack of focus and poor performance eventually cost me my job in the first week of July.  I wasn’t sleeping at all, or eating, and was exhausted all the time.  I’m not angry with Vera House for firing me, I’m angry at how they did it, but that’s another story for another time.  My counseling continued, and I tried to not bring any of this up any more, but I guess it was still there under the surface.  I still wanted the whole misunderstanding “fixed”.  It just bothered me that it had all happened in the first place, and no one had ever done anything to set things straight.

“He who conceals a transgression seeks love, But he who repeats a matter separateth [very] friends.”  Proverbs 17:9

I blame myself for not letting this matter go;  it was only important to me, but looking back, it should have made no difference to my therapy.  I had things said about me back in high school that were not true, and I think a lot of this triggered old stuff that I have never even yet talked to my counselor about.  For no real reason, other than the fact that we were dealing with the whole immediate divorce crisis.  And I made a complete and total mess of that;  brought it with me, in fact, from my old church, and it is so much my own fault for wasting so much time over things that either didn’t happen, or weren’t all that important.  I may have been confused, but I was also just extremely stupid.

Fast forward to the week of Halloween in October of 2010:  I had fallen asleep on the couch one night;  I was home alone, and it was late.  I slept with the television on, and when I woke up, there was a program on that I don’t normally watch.  It was Criminal Minds, which is an extremely graphic fictional program about solving murders.  I do like forensic shows, but not this one.  I was too tired to get up and find the remote, so the program went on, and I continued to lay there, and half watched it, and half slept.  It caught my attention finally, because it turned out that the murderer in this particular episode was killing all of the women in his town whom he believed to be ‘Jezebels’.  He targeted women who were cheating on their husbands, and then trapped and killed them by tying them up, and letting them be eaten by dogs somewhere out in the woods.  Throughout the show, they went back and forth to the scriptures about Jezebel in the Bible, and how she was eaten by dogs for her sins, and the end of the show was the most horrific, bloody, terrifying scene of the murder of the last victim.

I should never have watched this.

Extremely distraught, all I could think was “Oh my God, this is what she thinks of me?  That I should be eaten by dogs?”  And then I did what ultimately ended it all.  I went to the computer, still groggy and half-asleep, and sent her an email saying how upset I was at what had happened to my counseling;  how frustrated I was with all of it, and ready to give up.  Not because of her; because of me.  I don’t remember exactly what I wrote;  I don’t believe I wrote anything bad about her, just how I felt about the whole situation.  The whole mess.  Never heard anything back.  By the next morning, I had a sinking realization that I probably shouldn’t have done that, and that she would most likely be upset, but was totally unprepared for what happened when I walked into my next appointment.

The moment she came into the waiting room to get me, I knew it was bad.  We sat down in her office, and I think she asked if I had anything to say.  I didn’t know what to say.  I remember feeling very cold.  She said she was sure that I was aware that this would be my last appointment, and that she was done;  she would no longer be my counselor.  This is very difficult to write about, and I’m not really sure of everything that was said.  I knew she was extremely, extremely angry;  it was one of the most humiliating and traumatizing things I have ever been through.  I was numb with fear and unbelief.  I could not believe what I had done.  She said she would “refer me to another counselor” and do whatever she had to do to facilitate that, but that she herself would no longer work with me.  I don’t know that anyone has ever been that angry, or said such harsh things to me.  I don’t know how I made it out of the office, or through the rest of the day.  It was surreal.  That day will forever be part of me, and I can’t ever get away from the memory of it- from the feeling of the memory.  Not even for five minutes.  I wasn’t allowed to explain at all, nor did we talk about the email, which is what I had expected.  I did not expect ten years of therapy to end, suddenly, without warning, right in the middle of the work we were doing.  So this is what I mean when I say that “We ended over a very bad episode of Criminal Minds” because, in effect, we did.  Ten years of the hardest work I have ever done, thrown away, in less than an hour.  Over.

Finding the right therapist happens once in a lifetime;  it’s a one-shot deal, and this was mine. I waited my whole life for it, knowing God would eventually send someone to help me, and He did.  She and I both knew it when I first asked her to be my counselor;  she said God spoke to her in that moment and told her she was supposed to help me.  My pastor confirmed this.  It doesn’t happen twice, nor will it. This is the person God ordained to walk alongside me on this journey;  it is the person He sent to help me, from back when I was a little girl.  Our lives had intersected long before we had ever met, in the way that only God can weave two lives together, for a purpose that lies far ahead in the future.  There is no one else I would have trusted, and I considered her to be not only my counselor, but also a mentor, and a friend.  I both loved and respected her;  still do, in spite of all of this, especially considering how much of it all is my own fault.

I will not ever trust anyone to this degree again.  Not ever.

My counselor has a small sign, or plaque, in her office;  she bought it in an antique shop one day when she was out for a walk.  It says something like “God will not look you over for medals, or degrees, but for scars” or something to that effect.  Had I known I would never see it again, I would have made a point of memorizing it, because that sign was the thing that had told me from the very beginning that I was in the right place for me.  It is my favorite thing in the office, and I miss it.

I also wanted to say that she did, that same evening of that horrible day, call and apologize for saying the statement about Jezebel, and said she never intended to call me that, or imply anything by it.  I sincerely believe her.  I have said many things in my own anger that I hope people can forgive me for.  But we have never reconciled, or healed, or resolved anything else.  Things remain as they are, or rather, as they were left that day in her office.  The day (that first week of November) was the day before I was to start a new job.  I lost that job shortly after, and the next one, because of how this has affected me.  I am currently on disability, because I just can’t meet any employers expectations, nor do I care to.  My grades immediately fell, as I was in my last year at Syracuse University at the time, and I cannot now get into graduate school to finish my Master’s degree.  Everything has fallen apart.  I’m not doing anything until this is resolved.  Can’t do anything;  can barely function.  For me, every day is November 4th, 2010.  Time stopped that day, and all I am doing is going through the motions, because I have to. Only because I have to.  This has destroyed everything;  my life, my health, my home, and my ability to trust people.  My hope.

I will not ever go to another counselor;  like I said,  this happens once in a lifetime, and she is the person ordained by God for me.  Not because it’s about her, but because that is what God intended.  I know this to be true;  I had it, and I lost it, mostly by my own doing.  She helped in more ways than she will ever know, in spite of everything that happened to threaten the whole process along the way.  And a hell of a lot happened.  In saying that the ten years were wasted, all I meant was that it is a waste if this is how it ends.  I am at a complete loss out in the world on my own;  counseling helped me to get, and keep, a job;  to go to school;  to deal with trying to raise two girls on my own.  It gave me a safe and private place to deal with stress, and emotions, and fears, both real and unreal.  I will not do this outside of the privacy of that office, and all of my undone work is still in there.  Still needs to be done there.  Not forever;  in my silly, stupid fantasy life that all avoidants have, I thought that once we had worked through the trauma of my divorce, and what that all meant for me, that she would help me learn how to deal with people, especially men, which I am definitely not good at.  I don’t have a clue what I’m doing.  She’s a pastor;  I thought that she would help me learn how to date, or interact with people, so that I could eventually meet someone and get remarried, without making the same fear-based mistakes I made the first time around.  I knew I needed someone not only for accountability, but to help me work through the issues I will most assuredly have when it comes time for that. Then I figured I eventually wouldn’t need her anymore, and my therapy would come to gradual and healthy end, and I would know when I was ready to move on.  It’s how good therapy should end.

I was not ready for this.

Know this:  As much as God has a plan for your life, so does the enemy.  And he will use everything and everyone he can use to keep God’s purposes from coming to pass in your life;  when he cannot tempt you into outright sin, he will use distraction.  If that doesn’t work, he will cause dissension.  His ultimate goal is always destruction.  I walked blindly into this one, and didn’t see it for what it was.  This was my fault, and I have been left in a mess I can’t get out of, but I still trust God.  If He truly ordained this, as I believe He did, then no demon in Hell can destroy what God calls and ordains.

I have tried to write only what I know, and believe to be true.  I’m tired of writing around things, and not feeling free to be more direct because of what people will think. I don’t want to hurt, or misrepresent, anybody or anything.  There is so much more that could be written, but this is already long.  I am tired.

So good-night.