"Come in," she said, "I'll give you shelter from the storm"

What do you need right now, Grace? Shelter from the storm ~ that’s what I would like right now, that’s what I need right now, dear therapist. Shelter from the storm.

I don’t doubt my determination to survive and yet here I am crying again. Crying and wishing for some GD shelter from the storm…the therapist does not question my commitment or desire to continue to work through this and some day come out on the other side. At least I don’t think she does. After nearly 4 years of working with her I know I can trust her but the walls constructed in the past 2 months and it makes communication tremendously difficult.

I can’t find my safe place now…it was such a fragile structure to begin with, made of straw and easily blown away in a storm. But it did exist two years ago. It did. And for the first time in my life I felt understood, safe, ‘real’. My safe place was a place I could be angry and sad, and hopeless. A place I could ask for guidance in the midst of confusion; a place of encouragement and comfort. A place where I could find shelter from the storm.

But I can’t find it now! I feel like I am on the edge of tumbling into oblivion due to my own intransigence and inability to let the therapist back in. And I desperately need her tonight…shelter from the rain, stability in the wind, comfort in the thunder and lightning that is threatening me now.

And what is maddening to me is if the therapist walked up to me right now, with a stadium sized umbrella and said, as she tried to say today, “Grace, come in and I will give you shelter from the storm.” I still stand in the rain, wind and thunderstorm and decline her umbrella because of my fear she would just wrench it away before the storm was over.

So, here I sit, like a frightened child, on my own little island, surrounded by the storm, crying my eyes out over loss and betrayal…on an endless search for shelter from the storm.

Here I sit arguing with myself!
"Grace, you can't do it alone.  She wants to help you - take the damn umbrella!" 
"No!  I won't take it!  I don't need her damn umbrella!"   
"Fine! You stupid baby! Suffer by yourself then ~ stubborn little bitch!" 
"I said take the umbrella!"

Messed up?  That doesn’t even begin to cover it. 
I wish I at least had a raincoat tonight ~ I am not waterproof and it's beginning to hail!