"of course"

We can have a final session.  In which I will just cry?  So, that will be fun?  I mean, this is good news.  But it will still be awful.

I guess the agenda really is to express some of my reaction, and to define some next steps—like asking her who else in her practice might be a better fit, and/or where else I might want to go with this part of my treatment.  (Yes, I do have half a mind to just quit here, and I can't tell whether that's passive-aggression or just thrift—most likely a bit of both.)

Really what I want from a session is a chance to be heard, and some advice about the transition, and also to get totally clear on whether there is, in fact, any chance of being an exception (there is not, I don't think, but it's hard to quit thinking there is until I hear it from her).  I think this needs probably to wait until next week, so I can touch base with my therapist and clear my head a little.

In the meantime, my food is fine.  I've choked up on it a bit—added up my calories at the end of the day yesterday and skipped a pre-bed snack I might otherwise have gone for—but I'm not restricting quantitatively or qualitatively.

"Remember that you're the one who's done the work," my boyfriend says.

What I want is to see that she's sad.  That's what I want.  In addition to the pragmatic things.

Whoops

...and, I'm diet-googling.

This is legible behavior.  This is "let's make a reason for it to be good not to have someone checking on you."  This is "let's get a hit of that single-minded drive."  This is "let's find a new standard, a new way to know that things are going okay."

When I was younger, I expected being able to interpret my own behavior to be the thing that made that behavior resolve.  I have been in therapy long enough to know that this is not the case.  I cannot change my behavior by knowing where it comes from or where it means.  Interpretation does help: it lets me drive a wedge between my thinking and my behavior.  It gives me space to reconsider and insulate that behavior from my destructive thought patterns.  But my behavior?  I can only change it by changing it.  Here, this means that I practice self-care.  I get enough sleep.  I get enough food.  I tell my boyfriend I love him.  I tell my father I do not have time to see him tomorrow.  If I can't get pages together by tomorrow afternoon, I tell my writing group I need to bump back to next week.  I get to the gym tomorrow evening, and then to my co-op for groceries.

And I remind myself that the solution to this problem is not ketosis.  (It's not.)

Ouch.

Two days ago, I got an email from my nutritionist saying that as she returns from her maternity leave, she will be discontinuing individual counseling sessions.

From the couch, my boyfriend saw me furrow my brow.  He inquired.  I burst into tears.

I don't even really want to talk about it, is how much I hate this news, so this is kind of a placeholder of a post.  I feel hurt and angry and a little bit convinced that I can talk her into changing her mind, making an exception.  I feel afraid.  I like the woman I've checked in with this summer okay, but it's not the right fit for a long-term working relationship.  She's not thoughtful enough; she's not interested in the specific experience of fatness.  (Also, she palpably does not find me charming in the way my own nutritionist finds [found?] me charming, which always makes me just a little bit of a performing monkey, crashing my cymbal for approval, trying to make my audience like me.)  I am afraid of my own internal negotiations without solid guidance, the way I can drift, the way I can vacillate.  The speed with which I can lose touch with common sense about food, with the goal I just had a minute ago, with which I can change track.

I have been waiting for her to come back since she left in May with white knuckles and she is not coming back.  I've been seeing her for about seven years, and she doesn't even want to have a final session.  (I thought about this for a solid day and a half, then sent an email requesting a final session, which kind of feels both totally undignified and also like a request that couldn't be turned down, but you know, we're in uncharted territory here, because I would also have thought that it would have gone without saying that one was necessary.)

It feels like she doesn't care what happens to me.

And it just feels childish, to have this kind of a collapse about this thing.  The intensity of my reaction is maybe unanticipated?  I had never given any thought to what my reaction here would be, because this is not a possibility I had considered, but I somehow doubt I would have said "weeping, collapse," had I been speculating.  And yet, "weeping, collapse" is exactly what happened.  I could not work this weekend.  I declined to answer text messages from friends about plans.  I just kind of sank.

I don't know what I will do without her.  I don't have a plan.

Here's what I'm noting: my unobstructed and prolonged grief; my nervous dread; my passive-aggressive inclination to make her sorry (I canceled the appointment I'd had on Wednesday with the woman I've seen this summer, mostly because it's too expensive to just go and cry in front of someone I'm not comfortable with when I can wait literally an hour and cry to my therapist instead, but also I think because it felt like the only avenue available to demonstrate pain); that I am still keeping a food journal in the usual way after a moment of "why bother?" but am also experiencing heightened anxiety about what I eat.

I just feel blindsided?  And/or abandoned?  And/or pissed at being dumped by email?  Everything about this is one hundred per cent terrible.