“I’ll stand by you
I’ll stand by you
Won’t let nobody hurt you
I’ll stand by you
Take me in, into your darkest hour
And I’ll never desert you
I’ll stand by you”

– The Pretenders – I’ll Stand By You

I sit here blowing tissues and a few tears escaping my rein, still tormented by my body. Last night I had a dream about Damien, my disability worker who told me he thought I’d become too dependent on him and wanted to cut back on our sessions. I have written a few posts about him, such as “Everything good turns to shit“, where he basically destroyed my stay in a private hospital. He was repeating the trauma of all my other workers. He was distorting everything I’d told him. When we were in the car once I was talking about the importance of disability workers, where, for some clients, it’s their only contact with the world and they see them more than anyone else in their life. Damien seemed to worry he was stopping me from seeing my friends, which is not true. Since he’s been on leave, I have not seen more of my friends.

I thought I was done with him. I was so angry I felt like writing a complaint about him to his organisation. But last night’s dream caught me by surprise. I dreamt that I “woke up” on a concrete block in an abandoned, graffitied building near the city. I was meant to be meeting a friend in the area that day but I didn’t know how I got there. Then Damien appeared. He told me he’d been going through similar things to me, had been reflecting on things and had realised he couldn’t do this to me. He couldn’t leave me like all my other workers had. While he had to cut back on his work because of his own struggles, he wasn’t going to cut me. He was going to keep his clients with complicated needs. He took my hand and led me out of that cold, hard, lonely place. And for the first time I touched him. But I know it was just dream. That’s all it was.

It has been two months since I’ve spoken with Damien. The last text I sent him was this:

“Hey Damien, I know I’m probably the last person you want to hear from right now, but I just feel awful how we left things. I don’t mean what I said about not wanting to see you at all anymore. I value our time together and I had an extreme trauma reaction to feeling powerless about the decision to cut back our sessions. That really should have been a decision that we spoke through together, but I’m not sending this text to argue with you. I didn’t realise you have so much on your plate already and are not coping. I’m sorry that I have contributed to that. I’m really sad to hear you are not ok. I didn’t know that you had been finding previous texts I’d send you stressful. Anyways I hope we can keep seeing each other, even if it’s just once a week now. I hope things get better for you. I know I am a client but I do care about you too. I will give you the space you need now.”

I never heard back. I texted his organisation today to ask if he was back yet. Apparently he is still on leave. Poor guy must have totally crumbled. Honestly I don’t know if he will ever come back. My mum said that he planned to only do one day a week when he returned. I would have understood if he told me he had to cut back on our sessions as he had personal issues and had to cut back on his work. If he made it about him. But don’t be paternalistic and make it about me. I can make my own decisions. Two sessions a week was working well for me. I don’t agree that I was excessively dependent on him and I suspect I would be worse off only seeing him once a week. It is like the way feeding someone breadcrumbs can actually encourages dependence, making you want them even more. I am more likely to crash after each session knowing I have to wait a week to see him. I didn’t crash, though, after seeing him twice a week, which better met my support needs.