i had an affair with my psychiatrist when i was seventeen. It was intense and explosive and exhilarating. Being with him felt like perfection. He was sweet and gentle, he understood me. i felt powerful and important to have something in me that made this man risk the life he knew - wife, kids, career - just to be with me. When i was with him, all my incessant anxiety fell to the wayside. Our intimacy was entrancing. i loved him.
But, of course, it was unhealthy. And it ended horribly. i fell off the deep end. i thought he'd join join me for the spiral downward. He shocked me when he met me with criticism, blame, and a police intervention. i was devastated.
It took months to really have all the events sink in and register. Then another few months went by agonizing over him. But eventually, it passed. i remember the moment i realized a whole day carried on and i just focused on my life and my little tasks and i hadn't thought about him. Time went on and i made strides in my healing.
Now four years later i think i've done pretty well with myself. For having been obsessed with him, i barely think of him. About as much as any other painful memory.
But recently, a whole new, deeper layer is churning itself up. The pain is real and fresh, i feel vulnerable and fragile.
i stumbled across an old voicemail message from him. Yes, saved from 5 years ago. At first i saved it because it was cute and made me feel special. Then i continued to save it in case it would be of use while i reported him. Then it just stayed in my voicemailbox because i was avoiding it. i couldn't stand to hear his voice. The sound made my heart drop to my ass, and my eyes glaze over, and i'd need a minute to come back to reality.
Last week i decided it was time to get rid of it. i knew it'd be very difficult. i asked my therapist for help and we planned to do it in our next session. It was then that i had listened to the message in its entirety for the first time in years. i completely froze. She and i talked about its meaning - then and now. How it's detrimental to me now, but my hesitation to let go of it....
i had her sit next to me, we had to use her phone to get into my voicemail since my phone had died while we were talking. The message came back on and right when i heard his voice, i froze again - but this time with more dread. i asked her to press 7. Delete it. She insisted that i do it. But i shouted at her to just do it, and began to curl in on myself. She pressed 7, and hung up the phone. i heard her take a deep breath, call me brave, and tell me she was proud of me. But i could feel myself dissociating - hands wrapped on the back of my neck, face buried in my elbows, breathing getting irregular. i should have asked her for help re-grounding. But i didn't. Perhaps i was scared of her reaction, and i was just too overwhelmed by my old feelings, they had seized me. i began to hyperventilate. i faintly heard her protest, try to get me back, but i slipped into a dissociative episode. i stayed there for 15 minutes (it stayed neatly contained by the 45 and top-of-the-hour markers) and i came to exhausted and frazzled. We processed everything that had occurred. i had no clue he still had that hold over me.
My therapist connected my trauma with the psychiatrist to my trauma with my parents - how he not only was a friend and a lover, but a provider, comforter, mentor, protector. i never connected the two, and although i had initially scoffed at the notion, a couple moments of pondering it allowed it to make sense.
i hadn't received much tenderness from my parents, and as a child of divorce i was in need of extra. To protect myself, as a kid, i normalized what was happening in my life. i told myself it doesn't hurt because it just makes sense for it to be like this. The wound was covered. It festered for years. It was soothed occasionally by a vice-of-the-moment. The good doctor became one of them. The vices all became life-threatening issues. So much of my time was dedicated to basic stabilization. i wasn't able to reach down as deep as i needed to into my core to address this wound.
Until now. It's safe to delve into all this and really heal. And i'm feeling it all acutely. i've been fuzzy, dissociative, irritable, weepy, but i'm working through it. When i find myself getting caught up in feelings about the doctor... Well that's an issue in itself. i feel guilty for still having feelings about him. Like, there are a lot. i'll hate him, despise him, then miss him, and remember how, frankly, having him there for me kept me from killing myself many times. But he's such a sick bastard and abused his power and victimized a young fragile girl seeking his professional guidance and care, but... And i can barely stomach swinging between the extremes.
While there is legitimate trauma with him, it also mirrors another trauma. One i have yet to really deal with. My parents divorced when i was 3 and it caused a divide in me from the beginning of my life, make me feel like i was never whole. How could a toddler possibly deal with it? Just carry on. Don't pay it no mind. i did a rapid adapt.
It's finally coming to the surface after all these years.
The betrayal i feel from when the doctor just dropped and abandoned me is amplified by the unresolved pain of my dad's betrayal, leaving me and then staying distant. A semi-present father. When i miss the doctor, it's kind of like grieving my mom, so zombified by pain pills, and frenzied by OCD. i miss the connection and the tenderness. And with the whole lot of them, i never got the care i needed. i feel like a lost scared little girl, so sure there's something defective in her, sure she is worthless, and expecting to get hurt again soon.
It's a new struggle, and i'm keeping my support system close. i'm trying hard to go about my days as i usually do. i'm trying to stay focused on gratitude and hope. It's what got me through the previous years of hell, there's no reason why it shouldn't now.
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