"I Don't Want to See You Anymore"

“I don’t want to see you anymore.”


I heard that line yesterday evening and it’s the first time in my life I have been HAPPY to hear it! Nope, it wasn’t from a loved one, but from my counsellor.

“You’re doing absolutely fine. Honestly, I don’t feel that you need a weekly session like this. I almost feel like you’re counselling me now,” she laughed. “You know where we are if anything changes, but you’re doing great.”

We’re going to have a closing session next week and a follow up a month later to make sure all is well. But that’s it.

I feel incredibly relieved. I took the decision to start a programme of counselling in 2010 because I needed to face up to grief I had ignored for many years. Ignoring it meant that every single time something else went wrong, I would bottle up some more and it surfaced as anger and pushing people away. That’s not something I wanted my little boy to replicate, so I decided to go to the pros and get some help with dealing with this stuff.

The first 6 or so sessions were agonising to be honest (as I'd been warned they would be, actually). Talking with a complete stranger about things you don’t even feel comfortable thinking about alone is a really painful experience. Dealing with emotions that are traditionally “not manly,” and finding a way to communicate it is really surprisingly difficult. Those opening six sessions opened so many floodgates for me and I seriously considered quitting during those weeks. But I stuck with it and I’ve essentially learned how to handle emotion. It sounds really bizarre to say that. Some people are just automatically good at doing so and for me it was a frikkin difficult thing to learn and incredibly frustrating. But the change in me has been incredible and noted by all of my friends and family. Most importantly, my son communicates his feelings to me more than he did before. I wasn’t expecting that but apparently, children can read our emotions better than we can sometimes and as soon as I started dealing with my own shit, I was obviously giving off a much more open vibe to him. He talks to me very comfortably about how he feels about his Mother or anything else that upsets him, as well as being much more chatty in general.

2010 was a really awful year. As well as my son coming to terms with the loss of his Mother in 2009, I lost a very close friend as well and there was a lot of transition, upset, anger and change on a personal level for me. I was a complete asshole in many ways during the year. It was not my finest year, to say the least.

By the end of the year though, I was feeling like I’d walked a hideous path and finally arrived at an amazing destination. And this year is starting very well. It will arguably be the biggest year in my life. I am getting married in 4 months, moving to a very “family home” type property outside of the city next month and my baby sister is getting married too. It’s a big year.

So today, I’m all smiles. And long may it last.