Three months does seem to be par for the course, at this point.
I re-emerged in December, though. Temporarily; the therapist drew me out against our will, and the child. We revisited that yesterday.
She spoke to me directly, which was a strange experience. She’d asked J what he wanted her to call me, but he’s too afraid to tell her my name, so he said ‘Protector’ was fine. I find it vaguely condescending, to be spoken to like a fragment and not a person in my own right, but J’s self-control and self-consciousness is too strong for him to talk to her about that.
Anyway - she spoke to me directly, when J switched chairs. I knew I was in control because I could make eye contact with her (J can’t do that, not ever). And I was angry. Because she was asking me to step out of the room: to let J function without me for a while, because she feels that I’m hindering his progress by preventing him from feeling.
When she asked, I wanted to refuse. I haven’t forgotten the last time I let my guard down, to let someone see us as three and not one. What happened to the child.
But in the back of our head, J was asking so quietly for me to go. And it terrified him. I could feel that much. The idea of letting his walls down, of being left with just him and the child and nothing inbetween, was terrifying. But I stepped out.
He said to her that he felt ‘wobbly’ without me. Like an egg undercooked. She asked when the last time he’d felt wobbly was, and he said it was after our last session, when she’d dragged me out of hiding.
Anyway. She asked about other times he’d felt that way. He has a hard time pinpointing specific scenes, memories; he’s always trying to figure out what she wants him to say, what angle she’s trying to take. He’s suspicious like that even without my influence. But she got him to talk. And after things I won’t go into here, she got him to cry- crying has been a subject of their discussions a few times, his lack of it, his refusal to allow it. He couldn’t stop it without me there.
After he cried, she asked if he’d like to stop, and he said yes. I think I returned to him almost immediately, without being asked. She asked later if he wanted to invite me back in and he said “He slunk back in a while ago; subdued, but no less present.” I liked the wording.
I don’t like leaving him. I don’t like leaving the child, and I don’t like that she asks him to ‘alter’ his memories when they’re already so fragile and susceptible to suggestion.
But it wasn’t like last time, where being dragged out into the light made me paranoid and hyperprotective of them both for days. So. Hm.
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