And now I'll be walking alone.

I walked into my second therapy session of the week this afternoon (I go twice a week, Mondays at 3pm and Tuesdays at 1pm) and sat down to bad news.

My therapist who I have been with for almost a year and a half, the woman who has been with me since the beginning of my nightmare is leaving.

Her husband is in graduate school and has been living in another town about 45 minutes- an hour away since last summer or so. She has been commuting from that town to here, stays with her family or in-laws Monday-Wednesday and sees patients and then goes home to be with her husband. A couple of months ago she cut her schedule back to just Mondays and Tuesdays and condensed all of her appointments into those two days.

Today she told me she has accepted a position close to home and we will have to say goodbye in just two weeks.  We only have four sessions left before she goes. 

I was VERY upset.

I can't say I didn't see it coming, I did. How can you sustain a relationship with all that time apart every week and all of that driving? She must feel like she intrudes on her in laws by staying with them every week too. I can't imagine that being super awesome no matter how close her family is, and I don't know anything about her family. (Obviously. She's my therapist. You're not supposed to talk about her personal stuff. It's not professional. It's all me, me, me in there.)

I knew it was coming, but I still didn't feel prepared and how fast it's going to happen was a bit of a shock. I sat in the car and cried afterwards. I just felt like I have been doing so much better lately and this feels like a huge set back. This is the biggest support person I have in my life now and I'm going to lose her. It feels a little like being abandoned. I know I'm not, I know she's a professional and this is her job, but, it just feels that way. I don't want her to go away... I depend on her!

After I lost Matt, it took me a long time to find a therapist. Kaiser could not offer me the kind of support I needed and once they kicked me out of outpatient (there's a limit to how long you can be in it) and then out of the outpatient support groups (another limit) there wasn't really any where for me to "go." The most a therapist could see me was once every 6 weeks. I could sit on an emergency list in case anyone canceled (and I could take their appointment), but that was it. There wasn't a support group that really fit me. I couldn't be with the bereavement/grief groups- no one had died. I could go to a depression support group, but I was devastated and traumatized, I needed more. I could go to a relationship support group- but it was mixed sex and I didn't want to talk about that, I didn't need relationship support, my relationship was over. That was kind of the point. I took classes and attended support groups for anxiety, depression and PTSD and tried to find a therapist outside of Kaiser. Everyone was so expensive. I called every place they reccomended to me and I still couldn't afford it. I sat in my house, under the covers and cried. I didn't shower for weeks. I stopped eating.

Finally my mom came to visit in September and went through the directory and came up with a list of non-profits that would work with me on a sliding scale. It still took me another month of hiding in my house and crying, making appointments with therapists that were too expensive and who I didn't mesh with before I finally found my current therapist. I was so relieved to have found her and I was a mess when I finally got in. It had been almost two months and after spending so much time either sitting and staring or crying curled up in a ball in my bed, hiding from the world- I was such a mess. My appointments with her first and foremost got me out of the house. That was huge. What she did for me emotionally is indescribable.

I love her, she helps me, she makes me feel validated and supported. I dread the idea of starting over with someone new. Where do I even begin? Do I have to start all over? She wants to transition me to someone else in the office, but what do we do, go back to the beginning? This lady wouldn't know my heart, what I'd been through, how far I'd come, what still hurts me and what to be careful of.

It's daunting. But am I really ready to quit therapy? Probably not.

I just don't want her to go and I am sad. :(

It guess it's over. (They finished the investigation.)

The sergeant hasn't even sent me back the corrected statement yet. How can they be finished with it? Don't I have to sign it first?

The fact it says in this letter that it will be kept on file for five years says to me he will be keeping his job. I didn't know this was coming, in fact, this was postmarked August 31st, and I just got it out of the post box today, Sept 5th. When I picked it up and felt how thin it was... I felt worried. How can they be done when I haven't signed anything? When they made all those mistakes in the report? I haven't even heard back from the sergeant yet.  And it's over. This is it. This is all I get. I can't even get my friends to help me or return my calls, let alone the highway patrol or law offices. It just makes me want to give up... on everything. What's the use? There is no mention of the cuffing incident, or the forgeries, which I realize where off-duty but they included them in the report, so why include them at all? I feel so violated and just, abandoned, by everybody. My friends can't even deal with me.  I don't even want to deal with me anymore. Because I can't even help myself. It's over and there is no relief.

Another not so good night.

I don't want to go to bed.

I don't want to watch tv.

I don't want to mess around online.

I don't want to read or respond to yet another email I received this week from an attorney who will not help or even meet with me.

I don't know what to do.

I am totally overwhelmed and frustrated.

I don't know how to make sure Matt gets what he deserves.

I feel like I have to carry the burden of HIS mistakes, HIS poor choices and HIS sociopathy every day.

I feel like I always will, unless I can find a way to make sure he is punnished for what he did.

Reading about this... I don't think he should keep his job. This officer committed one embarrassing, semi-atrocious act. Matt committed more than I can count.

I need help. I don't know what to do. No one will help me. Everyone is too busy, doesn't do that, wrapped up in their own stuff, or too overwhelmed by me to even talk to me.

A friend of mine, a GOOD friend, a best friend, who has never really had a full discussion about what happened this last year with me because she has had too much of her own stuff going on, felt the need to tell me she wanted to just shake me and tell me to get over it. That I was "too smart, too pretty" to waste my life on having panic attacks in the grocery store. I didn't even know what to say.

In therapy, my therapist asked what I thought about that and I just shook my head and said that all that meant to me was that this was another person who did not know how to handle a big emotional trauma and was not someone I could speak to about it.  The therapist agreed... that is not how these things work. I am not behind the curve, these are not things you just "get over" and when you have an anxiety disorder, when you have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and suffer flashbacks, you can't just "snap out of it" and wake up one day and have it all go away and be honky dory. I'm not that person anymore. Yeah, this is pretty much all my life is about right now.  Because that's all I have room for right now. I have to take care of me. All of this is just part of taking care of me. I can't do any part of this any faster than how I am.  I am right where I am supposed to be. As MUCH as I hate that. (And I truly, hate it.) But this is where I am supposed to be.

But I also need help to move forward, and I don't know how to get it. I feel trapped. I always feel trapped, but today especially, I feel like a little animal running 'round in a tiny cage. Subject to the miserable world around me.

PLEASE SHARE THIS POST!

I know I have like, three whole readers out there, lol. If you are one of them, will you do me a favor and share this post? You are welcome to copy the pictures, the video and the information into your own blog if you like, or just put things into your own words and include a link. Or just include a link! Whatever you are willing to do. If you need any html codes, I will send them right over. Of course when I start trying to paste html into here, it goes active, so best to do that over email, right? You can reach me at: auntyem4@yahoo.com

As you all know, my anniversary was August 3rd and I had struggled to find a way to commemorate the date. A few days before, I received an email from a woman who wanted to do a portrait session with her three little preschool-age boys. She was also 9 months pregnant with a baby girl. We exchanged a few emails before she told me her husband would not be able to be in the pictures because he had died suddenly a few months before, about midway through her pregnancy.

He simply kissed her good night one night, went to sleep, and never woke up. They aren't really sure what happened. She is now raising these four children on her own. These four children, whom she and her husband fought for TEN YEARS to have, and finally were blessed with, through IVF. They met as undergraduates at BYU before he was to leave for his mission for the LDS church. "Oh, he had his eye on me... he was workin' me!" She kind of squealed when she was telling me about it. Her eyes could still twinkle, telling me about their love story. They had 15 or so years together, but now she has four kids under the age of five, including twins that she has to raise on her own. An education fund has been set up for the children. If you can donate in any amount, a $1, whatever, I think all of the kids, and Stephanie, who was a stay at home mom and is probably struggling with how she is going to provide for her family, could really use the help and blessings you can give them.

You can see their pictures, what their video and utilize the PayPal button and get their financial planner's address over HERE, on my blog, where the full post is, and FEEL FREE to repost any of the pictures, as long as you include their story and the way to donate along with it:  http://eheizerphotography.blogspot.com/2011/08/here-comes-sun-special-family.html

Here is another copy of the PayPal and financial planner button for your ease. PLEASE SHARE this information on your blog, your Facebook, your church board, or anywhere else you can think of! I have felt all month that I was supposed to spread the word as wide as I could and I have been emailing some bloggers directly, asking them to share, but some of you I know so well, or you have family blogs, so I won't ask you directly, but if you can, please share about this family. I know it is the right thing to do. They helped me when I needed it. It's my turn to help them. 

Instant! Secure, and you can go via credit card too!

 OR

Matthew Sheffield, Financial Advisor
Account number WH10988
UBS Financial Services Inc.
601 W Riverside Ave, Ste 1200
Spokane, WA 99201

I'm not having a good night.

Source: http://www.etsy.com/listing/76414082/everything-was-beautiful-and-nothing

I'm not having a good night. I am watching Will & Grace. Will & Grace was Matt's favorite. It would just make him crack up just talking about it. He would send me pictures of him watching Will & Grace in his patrol car while he was doing overtime shifts. (Which entail sitting parked at CalTrans construction sites and not ever moving, he said movie watching was fine; he preferred Will & Grace marathons. I don't actually know if this was okay or not now...)

Everytime I missed him, I would watch the show. Early on in our dating he commented people often said he looked like Jack and that he used to do the "Jack-2000!" impression thing. I hadn't noticed it at all before, but once he said it, I kind of cocked my head to the side (much like my beagle) and totally saw it. Matt was so soft spoken and gentle with me and the way he laughed, he could totally be feminine about it- but in a FUNNY way. He wasn't girly, but, I don't know, what was it they said on FRIENDS? That Chandler just had a "quality" about him that made everyone think he was gay? Well I NEVER thought Matt was gay, never, never, never, but he did have that "quality" of... something. He could totally be Jack. lol  But not in a bad way, in a sweet way. He would do a Jack impression and it was just, LOL, it was adorable. So when I look at Jack being ridiculously flamboyant... I think of Matty. (He was very manly to me too, he just had... a quality... lol.)

And right now, I just miss him and I feel like I am missing out on our relationship. Right now, in this moment, I don't hear any of the bad things he did. They are just gone, POOF'ed out of my head. All I hear and see and remember is this sweet, gentle, loving man who took care of me and loved me. He would wrap me in his arms and I would bury my head in the middle of his chest and he would ask me how my day was. And it was better because he was in it. My life was better with him in it. And it has been worse with him absent from it. And I know, that yes, knowing the truth has saved me, saved my life; my life will be better in the long run and while it has not been good this last year, it should, theorhetically, get better from here on out.  But I don't feel that tonight. Tonight I just miss my partner. I want our life back, and our dreams back.

I want him to come home.

 

Source: http://www.etsy.com/listing/77702890/ministry-of-poster-l004-opened-doors

In memory of Clarence

A week ago Tuesday we lost our family dog Clarence to pancreatitis. He also had diabetitis and had gone blind in the last few weeks. He had adjusted fantastically to the recent hardships and had even learned his "rights" and "lefts" and if he was about to walk into something we could just call out "LEFT!" and he would turn left, away from the wall/fridge/couch, etc, and keep on going. He was great the day I left for Vegas for my photography conference, but the next night he was up all night long in extreme pain, ended up in the hospital, and they could not make him comfortable. The diabeties suddenly couldn't be controlled any longer and he was in so much pain and so out of it my dad and my sister decided to let him go but they are both struggling so, so much with their descion. Everyone in our family loved Clarence so much, he belonged to all of us.

Sorry for the really low quality, my sister sent me this clip, it's longer than the one below, but it just shows him being happy outside... I love that. She had to shrink it so much in order to email it it just butchered the quality. I wish I had access to her computer I could probably do it better than she could.

This is just... CLARENCE. Being himself. He would only take treats if he could "kill" it first by playing this little game first. I'm so glad somebody thought to video tape it. After he went blind my dad still found a way to play it with him by rubbing the treat on the ground so he could "hunt it" with his nose. I miss him.