Holy hell

So, yesterday my to do list included gathering, sorting, and organizing all our counselor receipts from all our counseling sessions last fall and into this spring.

Last year, after the loss, we saw a counselor who specialized in couples who had experienced a loss like ours. She of course did not accept insurance, and is therefore out of network. We saw her until July, and I had dutifully submitted all our claims. July. And then my husband in August got interested in his friend at work. One of the things I raged at him was that he had every resource at his disposal. We had been seeing a counselor, for christ sakes, and he could have so easily called her up and we could have started that again. Or maybe he had lied at every single damn counseling session we had, including the last when we concluded we were back on the right track and could cease counseling.

It was too crazy to organize our our various receipts until now. Starting in October, we saw the counselor jointly. He saw her individually. I saw another one, also out of network, by myself. We saw the two counselors jointly. He saw another, of freaking course out of network counselor, for a specific speciality.

I carefully laid out all the receipts, organized by month and counselor and person. Quite a stack. Suddenly, knowing I did not really want to know, I pulled over the calculator and started paging through, totalling them all together.

I hesitate to write the grand total. Even in this age of let it all out blogging, money is still the last taboo. You might write about your latest invasive medical procedure, but certainly not how much money you make or how much your house cost. Let's remember I live in a large urban area, counselors can charge quite a lot per hour, and we had a lot of counseling time. Holy hell indeed. Add this to the money that came directly out of our savings account to pay taxes due to my husband's stupid, stupid last place of employment, and let's just say we're well into the 5 figures. And it's no wonder my savings account is nearly empty, and we're looking at the emergency savings.

So, I'll file the claims today. We won't get back much, probably not even 20%. There are claims in each of our names, we have to meet a deductible, and it spans two calendar years. So the insurance company can weasel out of a lot of it.

I figured this all out right at the end of the day yesterday, and was semi-shell shocked when my husband got home. He's been working hard lately. It looked like he fixed the drain issue that was causing our flooding issues. He fixed the garbage disposal. He was planning, last night, to take out the moldy ceiling in the kitchen. The total was too much (and if anyone cares to guess I'll tell you in the comments) and was beating inside my head, desperate to be shared. I told him I had done the totaling and to guess. He guessed less than 1/3rd of the total. I laughed. He made it to 40%, 50%, 60%, 75%, with me mirthlessly haha-ing each time. I believe he knows how much he cost us, financially and otherwise. I believe it sickens him.

We never talk about IT, though. Never. He wants it behind, done, over, the past. IT still looms large for me, though. This past month has been extremely hard. Partially it's seasonal - there are things you do in summer you don't do other times of the year. So there is a lot of comparing this year to last. And betrayal takes a lot to overcome.

Thousands of dollars of counseling and it's not fixed. It'll never be fixed. It can be lessened, though, I think. But not by pretending it never happened or couldn't happen again.

One of my last counseling sessions did yield a breakthrough of sorts. I never blogged about it, though I meant to. I was talking about my husband's deep desire to pretend it never happened, to just move forward, and how I needed more than that. I needed him to know how much he hurt me, us, our daughter, our life. And he refused to acknowledge it. And my counselor made the connection with his mother. His mother blows up and then wants it all forgotten. None of the hurt she caused matters, it's in the past and gone. The apple does not fall far from the tree. I remember I came home from that counseling session, weepy and tired. And my husband sat with me and pulled it all out of me. And I remember his face when I talked about that piece - how much like his mother he was acting. He was profoundly shaken and upset. But it didn't change. There is no place for my anger and hurt to go. No venue for letting it air out and breathe. I need more counseling. We probably together need more counseling. But not again with out of network counselors. It's just not a luxury we can afford, though I think it's a necessity we can't do without. So added to my todo list is finding a counselor(s) who accept insurance.