Group

Tomorrow is the last time I’ll be attending the group at the mental health clinic I’ve been attending for almost four years.

Group has been such a lifeline for me, and many of the friends I’ve made in my time here were made there.  Always held the 3rd Wednesday of the month, I’ve only missed it twice in four years and I schedule everything, including work, around it.

Group is complex. It’s been the same core people, give or take, for the past 4 years and the members know me in ways no one else does. Group is the one place in my life that is completely honest, authentic, and raw, but also comforting, supportive, and welcoming. It’s been my safe place over the years. It’s been the one place where someone – a group of someones, actually – really gets me. And that has been a huge gift that I don’t know if I can recreate anywhere else.  I don’t know if I want to recreate it anywhere else.

I’ll be able to find other mental health services at the coast, but group is seemingly irreplaceable.  I don’t have the words to describe what group means to me or what the members mean to me, and what they and the facilitators have been able to do for me since I joined.

I feel like I’m going to be a little lost without it, without them.

No, I’m going to fee a lot lost without them.

They are used to seeing me cry, but I almost don’t want to go tomorrow so I don’t walk over the threshold and burst into tears at the sadness I feel at this loss.