I know it's been ages since I've written, and I'm sorry for that.

It's been a lovely 6 weeks or so off with the kids during their summer holidays, and today was their second day back and school, and my first day back at work.

I'm so glad to be back at work - I love it, and have really missed both the kids and the staff!

Counselling's been going well on the whole.  Last week was weird as I'd missed a couple of weeks due to a holiday, and then a childcare crisis, and when I went I was feeling oddly calm.and everyone was happy and excited as it'd been a good holiday, and we've been having lots of fun.

Then I sat and wrote a letter to my abuser that I'd been meaning to for ages (not to send, just for cathartic reasons), and it sent everything into haywire.  I had Janie (age 10) panicking, Titch (13) completely devastated by it, and the male teen I've yet to discover his name just hating me for writing it at all.  The weird thing is, it's a very powerful letter and yet I feel nothing when I read the details in it.  If anything, I feel sad.  My counsellor said it made her feel angry, but nope...  sad.

This week's session was talking about my weekend spent doing something called LARP.  It's basically medieval re-enactment, but with more of a fantasy element so you can be whatever you want to be.  I play a healer called Caitlyn, and have been playing this role for nearly 12 years now.  For the first time at LARP (I've been doing the hobby for 18 years), I felt incredibly uncomfortable, and the littles were very upset and confused by what was going on.  They were scared and overwhelmed by all the people, the physical contact and a sense of distorted reality.  I spoke to Oya about it, and she's suggested explaining it to them.  I'm going to try that and she expects that next time will be better, and thinks maybe now I'm more aware of everyone that is why I felt what they felt about it.  I really hope I can make it work with them as I don't really want to  give up the hobby.

Today I've felt kind of disjointed and a bit on autopilot.

Oya thinks I'm still dissociated from my feelings towards the abuse - we talked about the fact I can almost robotically talk details (as I did during the court case), but don't feel emotion attached to that.

Her favourite phrase at the moment seems to be "it will come with time".  Problem is, although part of me understands that, another part of me is getting frustrated with the "process" (that she keeps referring to) taking so long.  She says we're looking at a few years of counselling yet to deal with things, and I felt my heart sink.  I guess I hadn't realised how in depth this whole thing is going to be, and how much there is to look at.  At the moment it seems the more we talk about, the more there is to sort out.

She's recommended a UK charity called PODS that offer help for people with DID, and she's recommended I attend a couple of their workshops that she's done personally.  She thinks they'd really help.  I'm going to look into them.  The dates I could find were early next year.

I guess at the moment I feel like I'm treading water, and can't see the light at the end of the tunnel.