Muchness and Light

Scratchin' and survivin'.... Hangin' in and jivin'.

I wrote my last blog post four days before an unexpected first date.

That was eight months ago.

I have been crafting this post for weeks or longer, debating and processing what I wanted to say and what the implications were for me and others. I have thought about who would see this—those loyal readers who’ve been with me from the very beginning, the new friends I have picked up in the 10 years since I started writing again, the people who were removed from my life by their own accord or by mine, those who I know still lurk from time to time for whatever reasons.

Like so many others, I met him online. In the aftermath of my last breakup, I spent some time with some of my girls and debriefed, both before and after Achilles’ tendon surgery. I wanted to have some fun and see what the dating landscape might look like, for whenever I decided I was ready to spend time with another man. I needed to heal, both physically and emotionally. I was still working and raising two young men and in the middle of grad school.

But there was this smile, this tilt of the head that intrigued me. It was simply lovely. Candidly bashful but brazenly joyful and mischievous. Real, complicated emotion captured at just the right angle. Just the right moment.

We realized quickly we had mutual friends, people I’d gone to high school with in Alabama in the late 80s. Similar sense of humor. Incessant, funny, deep, honest conversation started immediately.

The day after I wrote my last blog post.

I was still in a splint and on a blue knee scooter with a basket, but we both wanted to meet. Soon.

That was eight months ago.

Neither of us could have foreseen this, though I suppose no one ever does. But our respective breakups happened almost simultaneously. There was no intention of becoming really involved with this man, and I know he had no intention of jumping into another relationship.

Woobiee. My manister. He’s warm and fuzzy and comfortable. He is strong and supportive. He is present and mindful and considerate. He has done his work—really, with a professional!—and he is wholly encouraging of my continuing my work. He is brilliant and funny and caring. He is gregarious and generous. He is complicated and open and honest even when it’s difficult for him or for me. He is respectful of my boundaries, and I am encouraged by his words and his actions to defend them when necessary, without fear of recrimination.

He did what I asked him to do—which is the same thing I asked of myself—to be open to the possibility, truly willing to accept the consequence of each other, good or bad.

That was eight months ago.

I could gush ad infinitum about his qualities, and I share those words with him regularly. That’s not what this is about.

Muchness and Light was born out of my need to understand myself and to change. Ten years ago, I was unhappy and unhealthy and restless. I didn’t understand that my midlife crisis was beginning. To look back from the position of my life now, it’s startling to see the changes. I don’t know how 2010 Stephanie would feel about 2020 Stephanie and if she would have made the same choices, if she’d known what changes were coming.

Whatever intention I had then, I have achieved only a modicum of success by those standards. I did some writing. I saw some bands. I did a lot of therapy. I have been in and out of a string of relationships that became increasingly nuanced in their unhealthiness.

Whatever I hoped or planned for in 2010 and in the subsequent few years didn’t materialize in the ways I’d intended.

What I got was even better.

I have gotten two sons almost to adulthood. I have a close-knit core of friends who love me, and whom I adore, even when we can’t be together. I am six hours away from finishing my third college degree. I work at a job that I love, and I intend to add part-time teaching to my schedule as soon as graduate school is finished. I am in a relationship that is healthier and more secure than I have ever experienced.

From the very beginning of this process, I have written about how it’s all about the journey and not the destination. I was always open to the possibility of having my path twisted and turned in unexpected directions. I often chose the road less traveled, just to have something new to see along the way.

Above all else, I wanted to live an adventure. It didn’t matter the details, so long as I could talk to my friends and hang with my kids and listen to music and eat some good food and spend time with a romantic partner who offered reciprocity in care and honesty. Nothing ever has to be grand; I thrive on small moments strung together like colorful, random beads.

That journey took me in an unimaginable direction. When I started Muchness and Light, I desperately needed to hear my own voice. It was never public validation that I needed. Accolades and encouragement from others is always nice, but what I needed most was to know that I existed and had value. For a while, I searched for proof that I had value to others.

What I was really always looking for was the value I had to myself.

Over the last 10 years, I have struggled through the demise of my marriage, the financial and emotional aftermath of divorce, returning to college while working and raising two kids, health issues, and one unhealthy relationship after another. Sometimes I flailed and raged against the difficulty and the unfairness of it all, but I never stopped moving forward. Not once.

I still have days that I struggle. Life continues, and my journey is ongoing.

But I am content. Most days, I’m happy. Some days are darker than most. But I am generally content in my life. I am still defiant in being exactly who I am, but it’s no longer in reaction to other people or their bullshit. I am no longer screaming to hearing my own echo, just to know I exist.

Woobiee has admonished me from the beginning to be present, to avoid comparing the past to the present or looking too far outside the immediate moment. As I’ve discussed before, creating expectation spawns the possibility of disappointment, and I still believe that to be true. But expending significant energy on extensive emotional contingency plans is exhausting, and Woobiee makes it safe for me to relax and enjoy myself. He does not make me happy—that’s wholly on me—but he supports and encourages my happiness to the best of his ability, with as much effort as I expend in supporting and encouraging his.

Most days, I am centered and Self-led. I am integrated and whole, better able to handle stressors and insecurities. Not perfect, but better. Self-aware and Self-actualized and Self-controlled.

One of the things I have struggled with is how to handle Muchness and Light.

This blog has been a huge part of my journey, though admittedly decreasingly so over the past couple of years. As my work and school took a different direction, I turned to this outlet less and less. I am no less- Self-analytical—perhaps even more so—but I can hash out those deep explorations with an audience of one or two who know me intimately; I no longer need to hear myself to know I exist.

 I am a Real Girl.

So I have decided to put this on hold indefinitely. I will likely leave something up for a while, at least until I can get my files downloaded and park my domain names and figure out what I want to leave publicly available. For a while, I felt as if I were letting down 2010 Stephanie and 2013 Stephanie and any number of internal parts and iterations that have depended on this medium to be heard.

But I realized they don’t need that anymore, either. Muchness and Light was an invaluable tool, and it helped me to find the voice I lost over the years. It helped me learn to listen to myself and to advocate for myself, even and especially when there is no one else who will advocate for me. The support is always nice, but it’s ultimately Me who is responsible for Me, no matter when or where I am.

I wanted a life with no regrets. That’s impossible to achieve, really. To be wholly human is to be flawed; it is how we react to the consequences of our flaws that defines us.

But to be comfortable in my own skin is blessing. It is a merciful gift that I have given to myself. All I could tell my earlier Selfs is that it gets better, to just keep going.

I intend to still be going for a while, just not this direction.

Thank you to everyone who has encouraged me and supported me and challenged me. You have been an integral part of my journey. Some of you always will be; some of you may never have a place in my life again, nor mine in yours.

Wherever your journey takes you, I wish you well. I wish you good health and peace and the exact amount of adventure that you need. I wish you contentment and love.

Just as importantly, I wish the same things for myself, and I intend to do everything in my power to make that happen.

I deserve no less.

- StephQJ 5/16/2020

 

 

Vous êtes très belle, mama, girls and boys.

Queen Frostine is coming for a visit on Friday. She was supposed to have been here in September, but she was the victim of a bungled mob hit in NYC and got a broken knee. (She slipped in a puddle in the hotel lobby.) I’m super excited that she’s coming but also a little anxious. (surprise!)

She hasn’t been to Atlanta in almost five years. I’ve seen her in Chicago a few times, and in Birmingham when she’d come to visit family for Christmas. We met up in Boston and in New York for girly time. But the last time she was here I only had three kittens—not the four grown cats I have now—and I hadn’t even met Rango yet, let alone broken up with and kicked him out. The boys were smaller, and honestly, so was I.

But I texted her today, vacuum cleaner leaned against my hip, that my internal system is freaking out. “They’re freaking out that you’re going to judge us for our clutter and our extraneous grime.”

“Who?” she replied. “The cats? Tell them bitches to chill. If it’s your kids, tell them I am totally going to judge them, and they better clean the fuck out of that house.”

“They’re afraid you’ll think I can’t take care of myself when you see the bad paint and the external disrepair and the dirt at all the edges.”

She promptly texted me pictures of her own chipped paint and dirt and clutter. (And damn! She has a lot of Cheez Balls!)

I know all that matters is that she is here and that we enjoy each other’s company—still after more than 32 years. But parts of me are afraid she will be embarrassed of me, to see that I’m not holding it all together like I should. Like I used to.

As I was mopping an hour later, I thought back to 2014, to being in school full time and working three part-time jobs, including mopping other people’s floors so I could feed my kids. I remembered a summer day when Tricky was with me at a house. He sat on a bed that I’d just made, and I quickly admonished him to get up and stay on the hardwoods, where there would be no sign that he had been there at all. And I loathed every second of the implication that somehow my wonderful, amazing, fantastic child was less than because his mom could do no more to support him than to clean other people’s toilets. Never, ever did I want him to feel like he wasn’t good enough for anyone else, to be anywhere else, to sit on someone’s bed. For all of my belief that there is never shame in honest work, for all of my Sinderella jokes, I hated that moment more than most in my life.

The truth is, it has already been a hell of a year. As if work and two teenaged boys and four cats weren’t enough to amp up my anxiety on any given day, my long-distance relationship with Bumblebee has been complicated by his battle with a rare and aggressive cancer. (I can’t even begin yet to talk about how hard it is to be 180 miles away from him when he’s struggling with chemo fatigue.) And for some reason I thought graduate school would be no big deal to add on to everything. Plus my decrepit spine and chronic pain.

“You have got so much shit going on, if you didn’t have a bit of grime around the edges, I would be worried,” Queen Frostine texted.

So five years later, I am again mopping the fading kitchen vinyl, in the spare time between sessions of classes, battling the impulse to recriminate myself for every misstep that took me away from the easy upper middle class, with a cleaning lady and a lawn service and time to work out every day. I have finished two degrees and am working on a third (with a 4.0 after my first semester). I have a job I love and wonderful-if-challenging sons. I have great friends and supportive family and a boyfriend who loves me deeply.

But I am still struggling with my worth. I am still afraid that if she or Bumblebee or anyone really sees the clutter and bits of dirt at the edges that they will not want me. Somehow there is a part of me that still believes it is too dirty to be loved.

I don’t know if I will ever be in détente with my insecurities. I don’t know that I will ever not fear emotional abandonment. I think it’s hard for people who don’t fully empathize with it to really understand why I can’t just accept that I have people who love me and who will support me no matter what.

Every time I fall into this pattern of insecure questioning that I am lovable, Queen Frostine is there to remind me—literally every day—that I am loved, no matter what. She is the most secure relationship I have, and I still question it from time to time, but she never lets me forget that I matter, than I am good enough and accepted, no matter what.

Fuck the dirty floors.

 

I wish you a happy New Year, darling. May your new love be bright and fair.

It’s not news to anyone that I am superstitious af about New Year’s Eve:

From December 31, 2017:

I am superstitious about a few things, and New Year’s Eve is at the top of that list. How I spend that night is often indicative of the entirety of the following year. I can regale with tales of New Year’s Eve Omens for almost as many years as the Valentine’s Curse.

From January 10, 2014:

But New Year's Eve, in particular, freaks me the hell out.  There's something about the day or so surrounding the marking of the new year that seems to set the tone for the 364 days that follow.  If it's a good night and following day, the year generally goes well.  If it's harrowing—a car wreck with friends or a two-hundred-mile distance in the middle of a strained marriage—the rest of the year always seems to follow suit. 

For a multitude of reasons, 2018 seemed to be an especially trying year for me and mine. It was a year of upheaval for so many. Pandy lost her grandmother and her father. Cookie got divorced. Queen Frostine survived a Mob hit while we were on vacation in NYC. Max graduated high school, cycled through a few fleeting relationships, spent a month in Germany, and we all survived his first semester in college. Another surgery and back problems for me.

And in the middle of the most difficult year of therapy to date, I stumbled into a long-distance relationship that has presented both unimagined challenges and unexpected joy.

I spent last weekend with him, Bumblebee, and with my girls. We all sat at a restaurant together, laughing uproariously in a back room where we hoped we wouldn’t disturb other patrons (and their children) with our loud, foul mouths. All of us seem to recharge a bit when we are together, whether one-on-one or in little groups of twos and threes. This was actually the first time the Castration Committee had been together in its six-part entirety in the same room.

In fact, Queen Frostine suggested a change in moniker, because “Castration Committee” has, taken on an unacceptable tone of man-hating. One or two of us have managed relationships with good men, and four of us are raising sons to be good men. Ideas were tossed around—from Jugaloons to Side Show by the Sea—and all I can remember for sure from the uproarious discussion is the word Psyrens. So there we are, a group of smart, loud, singing women who just know the others, no matter the distance.

And I needed the time with my girls. I’d just survived my first Christmas on my own, ever. The boys were gone. Bumblebee and my girls were all hundreds of miles away. I’d gone into it with the intention of being brave and calm, my Self leading all of my internal parts calmly and safely through an emotionally-charged 36 hours with mulled wine and good food and the cats.

It ended up being far sadder and more miserable than even I could have predicted, and I am not allowed to be alone like that again.

But New Year’s Eve was looming, no matter what. I’d been worried about it for weeks.

“If something happens,” I told Queen Frostine, “and we aren’t together for New Year’s—”

“Then you aren’t together,” she finished.

It’s not an ultimatum, of You-be-here-or-I-won’t-see-you. It is my perception of an emotionally traumatic history that happens to be cataloged by decades of bad New Year’s Eves (and worse Valentine’s Days).

And I’d been clear, that my coming to visit him for the weekend prior did not absolve him of being with me on New Year’s Eve. I love time with him whenever I can get it, but New Year’s Eve is its own category of agitating for me. We planned a low-key evening—early movie and dinner at the same restaurant we’d frequented since our first weekend together—to just be together. But I could not let go of the possibility (probability) that it would not go well.

“Try to let the fear go,” Pandy said on January 30th. “What if we expect the best?? Do we then invite the best into our home/heart?”

Shaking my head violently, I responded, “I can’t expect that best. I can’t. There’s waaaaaaayyyyyy too much history for that. That’s asking to get shattered.”

But I spent that evening readying the house. I made the grocery list and checked the showtimes for the movie. Bumblebee, of course. I laid out the Princess Bride Blu-ray for our breakfast viewing pleasure. I washed the special glasses I’d bought just for toasting with mimosas.

“I’m afraid I jinxed it,” I told Frostine mid-morning, New Year’s Eve.

“You didn’t jinx anything,” she chided. I could practically hear her blue eyes rolling in her curly head.

And then he texted midday, while I was getting ready to leave work early, that he was sick. He was violently ill, unable to travel down the street, let alone the 200 miles to my house. On top of it, he was upset about how this would upset me.

I understood. I know the illness that was plaguing him. Hell, our Thanksgiving got cut short by my being sideswiped by the flu. Of course it wasn’t what I wanted, but I knew this wasn’t intentional, not malicious or even negligent. Wholly unexpected and unwelcomed by both of us.

If he’d just not shown up, no explanation, or if he’d shown up late, no explanation, or if he’d shown up rude and mean, no explanation, and then expected me to accept it and understand it and not express any confusion or hurt or displeasure, or blamed me outright for it, then I would’ve been let down.

I know, because I have been let down in those ways by men who professed to love me. Over and over and over.

But he got sick, and he told me. We came up with an alternative plan to wear each other’s t-shirts and snuggle under blankets and talk and FaceTime kiss at midnight, to save the champagne until we are together and can get a do-over.

And I was completely cool with that. I was centered and calm, accepting and still felt both loved and loving.

And then the anxiety struck.

Fighting off a nasty cold, I didn’t feel well. A short nap on the couch was discombobulating. Given what had happened just a week before, I steered clear of the wine and sad movies. But by 9:45, I was well-ensconced in my reluctant acceptance that 2019 will be a year of sickness and distance and thwart and tears and anxiety, that we will likely find ourselves frustratingly separated by illness and trying to make up for it when our already-difficult schedules allow.

“Baby, do not do this,” he admonished over FaceTime, his brow furrowed. “This is self-fulfilling prophecy. We are not subject to the whims of a capricious non-entity.”

Of course I know that. I am too smart and too well-educated not to understand the logical fallacy of my fear of being thwarted by fate or Fate or the Ghosts of Relationships Past. But the reality is that I have been conditioned over four decades to expect disappointment. I have learned to set the bar for other people so low that I just need them to show up. I don’t need them to do anything or say anything or bring anything. I just need them to be there, to be present with me.

My entire system is on such high alert, constantly scanning the horizon for potential disappointment:

• Is this something that might hurt me?
• Is this something that is likely to hurt me?
• How much hurt could I feel?
• Does that possible hurt stem from a previous trauma?
• How do I feel about that trauma now?
• How have I successfully dealt with this before?
• Can I avoid the hurt altogether?
• Is there benefit in feeling the hurt?
• Is there possible reward that’s not hurt?

This is how anxiety works. It is a constant cost/benefit analysis of people and experiences and moments, examining how they may impact my emotions and what future influence they may impart. It is eviscerating discernment, and it is neverending judgment of others and of myself, in desperate attempts to stave off hurt.

“Eventually, I have to stop,” I told him.

“Stop what?”

Stop hoping. Hope means the possibility of disappointment, of more hurt, of more agitation, of more anger, of more self-recrimination, of more tears and heart palpitations. Hope is an inherent expectation of good, of not-hurt.

If I have no expectation, then the good that comes can be met with exuberant joy and delight. And I do feel those things, regularly. I love deeply, and I am deeply loved, by my sons and my friends and my boyfriend and my family.

But that is not enough, and may never be enough, to assuage the perpetual angst that all comes down to basic value judgments made about me by other people, before I had clear, conscious memory. I cannot undo those choices others made, and I struggle to rectify my learned responses. At times, it is a gaping psychic wound that may never fully heal, only close over for some indeterminate length of time. I am always on edge, waiting for the next slice into an ever-refreshening scar.

I know: only my reactions matter now. How I choose to treat myself and others in light of my emotional makeup is what matters. And I try, so hard, to be present, to be mindful, to be kind to myself and to others, to carefully bring my concerns into balance before I act on them.

But when you feel like you’re drowning, it’s impossible not to thrash toward the surface with a desperate breath. When the anxiety hits, it is like waterboarding myself over and over with my own tears.

I am not, generally, unhappy. I am not so afraid that I have trouble experiencing the world, as I was when Max was a baby. I do have occasional days, when the benefit of staying in to read and binge watch whatever is greater than the potential cost of detached interaction with suburbia. I am far more than merely functional in my life. I am engaged with my wonderful, active sons, my dear friends, a man I love deeply who loves me just as much, a job at which I am very good, and I just applied to grad school.

Sometimes, though, I trip over a deeply existential crack. Usually, I can right myself and carry on, maybe with a momentary limp or scrape. Every so often, I fall into the chasm. Mostly I’ve learned to hold onto the edge and pull myself back up. I have no interest in traversing those depths ever again.

We missed the midnight countdown. There was a brief FaceTime at 12:02. I fell into a cold-medicine-induced, tear-stained sleep a few minutes later, the sound of raindrops and neighborhood fireworks outside, wrapped in his t-shirt. I woke this morning, fed and pet the cats, started a new book, watched the last bit of Leap Year while I prepped a Gouda-and-bacon frittata, started chicken stock and chicken salad for later in the week, prepped vegetables for roasting this evening, and did the dishes.

I often do more by noon than a lot of people do in a day.

I don’t write about these things to shame anyone else or myself. I don’t write to find sympathy from anyone else. I write, because there is someone else out there who needs to know they’re not alone in feeling overwhelmed, especially at times when we are expected to be happy and joyful and hopeful. I write because it’s cathartic for me, to help me cull so many simultaneous thoughts and emotions into better focus.

And maybe, just maybe, there comes the day when it all makes sense, my Epiphany, when I can close those old wounds for good.

 

 

What if this storms ends? And I don't see you, as you are now, ever again?

Four-and-a-half months ago, I found myself in a confusing place. I’d just realized the new guy I was head over heels for was dating someone else. I realized the ways in which I used sex to intimate love and exactly what my role was in re-traumatizing myself, constantly exacerbating my fear of emotional abandonment.

I made the decision not to date. Period. Maybe ever. And it was a very difficult thing for a girl who believes so deeply in love to eliminate the possibility of it at all, and to come to some kind of internal detente with that decision.

But then, I met someone. He was someone I’d known tangentially for more than a decade, though we’d never met in person. An unexpected conversation turned into another, and there is a moment (the event horizon, he said) where each of us realized the situation had turned in another direction.

Unexpectedly, and utterly terrified, I fell in love.

I’d spent years, off and on, begging the universe for some relief from my loneliness. Even when I was in relationship, it was always with badly-damaged men who refused to try to be better. Either I’d tire of their inconsistency, or they’d tire of my trying to get them to see how much better their life (and my life with them) would be, if they would just show up. Show up physically sometimes, but mostly I needed them to show up emotionally. Consistently. Reliably.

There were many, many nights on my own, when I would be in tears, prostrate before a god I barely believe in, praying for peace. Yes, I would prefer to be with a partner, because I believe so completely in the beauty and truth of love. But I eventually resigned myself to wanting at least peace in my solo heart, to accept the rest of my life in singledom. I paraded every hurt, in lurid detail, through my mind and steeled myself to not being vulnerable to them again.

But then, he appeared. Bumblebee. Kind, generous, smart, funny. Damaged but speaking to me through song. We meshed so well. He knew all of my shit, all of my fears, understood my ongoing process of trying to rewire myself from the inside out. No one, with the exception of the girls, had every accepted me so fully and completely. So incredibly lovingly.

Of course there was a catch: he was 180 miles away.

I’d just sworn up and down two weeks prior that I could never do a long-distance relationship. My need for physical proximity and regular contact was too great. But he was worth the chance. Initially, we were making it work pretty well. We would visit each other in our respective cities, and we were happy just to be together.

Eventually the logistics—four kids, visitation schedules, family obligations—started to erode our time together. Unavoidable demands on him were preventing us from having consistent connection, and it seemed to only be worsening. I was more anxious about this relationship than I’d been in years. The anxiety could be abated by reliable contact, but his logistics wouldn’t allow for it.

Faced with living indefinitely in a perpetually-anxious state, knowing the damage my response to the insecurity and anxiety could cause, I made the decision to end the relationship.

Nothing about it feels good. Choosing the rock over the hard place simply gives me a perch from which to see a vast, lonely ocean, a place from which to sing my lamentations. It feels like yet another trick of Fate, dangling the gilded promise of happiness, only to snatch it away again, laughing in her delight.

I don’t expect to do this again. There is no more surface of me to scar or fracture without breaking me open irreparably. My fear of emotional abandonment is consistently reinforced, and I have a direct role in choosing the relationships that undergird my insecurities. I do not trust myself to choose wisely.

It was so nice to be loved for a while again. It was nice to be missed when we were apart. It was wonderful to see my worth reflected in someone else’s eyes, far beyond the value of sex. It was wonderful to able to love someone, actively and deliberately, and to have my efforts appreciated.

But I am back in the confusion. I no longer believe it was an inherent flaw in me that made me unworthy of loving care and attention. I do believe I was a young victim of other people’s failings, and that set the course for how I would see every relationship and exchange and emotion in the years to come. Other people’s actions set in motion consequences that played out in me. I, in turn, made my own decisions with their own consequences, and somehow I seem to be so bogged down that progress forward is tiring and difficult and sometimes illusory.

Today, I don’t believe that I will ever really find what I know exists. It is there to be found, but I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to touch what is perpetually under a veil of tears.

I will stop crying, eventually. I will move through my well-honed List of Shit to Do after a Breakup. I will eventually feel like I can breathe again, and I will be happy again, though I’m not sure that my definition of that will ever be what it once was.

But I hope Bumblebee is able to find the balance he needs. I hope he’s able to establish who he is, within and without other people’s constraints. He is a wonderful man, and I love him very much. I want good things for him.

And I want good things for me.

 

 

Let me feel you moving like they do in Babylon.

During and after my break-ups of recent years, I have lamented why I wasn’t worth their fight. There is a lot of good about me, so why wasn’t it good enough? Was there something inherently broken, or was there something about me that was so bad that it outweighed the good?

In part 2 of this series, I wrote about what I find valuable in a partner. In part 1, I wrote about what I find to be valuable about myself. In hindsight, I do believe that the men I’ve loved found me inherently valuable. Whether or not they valued themselves, I’m not even sure I know, though their actions would indicate they valued themselves above all others.

But one of the things I realized recently is that we didn’t necessarily value the same things in a relationship. Shared interests and similar social and political leanings cannot sustain romantic interaction, if both parties aren’t looking for similar things in romance.

So what do I value in a relationship?

I value communication. It’s important for me to be in regular contact with the person I’m dating. It doesn’t have to be constant, though I fully admit that I am a very active texter, emailer, and caller. I will think of something that I want to share with that person, and I’ll send it before considering any ramifications. I don’t expect that there will always be an immediate reply, but it is important to me to get a response eventually. Ongoing conversation builds rapport, expresses affection in subtle ways, and strengthens bonds. But it’s just as important to me that expectations—of plans, of emotions, etc.—be shared. Far too often, I have inferred one thing to be true, only to be met with irritation that my interpretation was not at all what the other person intended.

I value reliability. Interaction doesn’t have to be constant, though it does have to be regular. Just as importantly, I have to be able to rely on the person to be there. Both because it’s just downright irritating when people don’t do what they say they’re going to do and because I have this deep-seated fear of abandonment, I need my partner to show up. I need them to show up when they say they’re going to, but also when they should. Dismissing important events or forgetting to do the logistical things that you’ve promised to do is an indicator that something in the relationship isn’t worth your time and effort. If you tell me you’re going to do something, show up and do it.  

I value kinesis. I spent a lot of time during my marriage and later in my relationship with Rango sitting around and waiting. I was waiting for them to get up on a weekend or waiting for them to get home from working late again or waiting for them to finish what they were doing to join me (or me and the boys) to do whatever. I stagnated in my marriage, and I became stagnant again during that subsequent relationship. It’s not that I can’t just sit and chill sometimes, but I enjoy going for walks at the park or going to see a concert or a show at a museum. But I also value emotional kinesis. I need movement forward. Not necessarily toward a goal of cohabitation or marriage [in part because I don’t know that I’ll ever be willing to do either of those again!], but at least toward shared future. Happily ever after shouldn’t mean stopping at some self-imposed pinnacle and hoping the balance of my life stays exactly the same.

I value family. My boys are a huge focus of my life, and that’s not changing any time soon. My extended family is important to me, and my girlfriends are the sisters I never had. Whomever becomes a part of my life becomes a part of that. It’s vital that we forge our own sense of family, as well, and that necessarily includes my babies.

I value safety. Yes, physical safety is a big deal. I was in one physically abusive relationship and for far, far longer than I like to admit. But emotional safety, for me and for my partner, is just as important. The relationship needs to be a safe space to share feelings and thoughts and ideas, without recrimination. Far too often, I have felt punished by my partner for expressing emotions he didn’t like. In healthy love, there’s no tolerance for stonewalling or emotional abuse.

I value passion. Look, physical passion may well dwindle after that ubiquitous honeymoon phase, but the loss of physical intimacy is the death knell for a relationship. I know; I’ve been there twice. Sex is natural (and wonderful and fun) and is a healthy expression of emotion and trust between two people. For me, a loving relationship will necessarily be emotionally and physically intimate.

I can write about what I want or need, what’s important to me in a relationship. But until I’m actually in a relationship again, I have no way to put these things into practice. Queen Frostine commented that my break-up with Finn was probably the healthiest and most mature I’d ever had. I do believe that I’m capable of clearly discerning when something is not working for me, of giving it time to grow rather than starting from a place of intense, immediate emotion, and of evaluating clearly whether or not the other person may be a healthy, cohesive match for me.

So I’m going to try dating again. At least theoretically, I’m open to the possibility.

But I’m also going to keep spending more time doing the things that are fulfilling to me, even if I don’t have a partner to join me. I’ve done a couple of 5Ks this year. I joined a fantastic philosophy discussion group that meets monthly. I’ve started volunteering.

If I meet someone who wants to join me for some things, I’m willing to let someone into that space. But I’m also keeping that space well-defined. It has taken me a very long time to realize that I’m worth my own effort, and I’m not willing to let that stagnate again.

 

 

But I don't need a man who doesn't understand the difference separating need and trust.

“Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.” This is not the first time I’ve mulled over that famous Warren Buffett quote. When I first started grappling with defining my own value and self-worth, I examined Buffett in relation to the Dutch poet Lucebert, who wrote, “All things of value are defenseless.”

The price any person is willing to pay to make themselves truly defensible, whether to themselves or to others, is at the core of their value.  Sometimes we do stupid things that tear that down, that devalue us in the eyes of others or in our own mind's eye.  Sometimes we do things inadvertently that drive up our value, and perhaps those acts are somewhat less important when we aren't really striving or sacrificing to make them happen. 

I think it's the acts and actions we require of ourselves to actively defend ourselves that make us valuable, that make us worthwhile.  And when those acts are performed in the face of adversity, especially self-adversity, they can often be those most costly while offering us the most to gain. 

Value is a manifestation of worth, which is some mystical, magical ratio of cost to benefit. But for something to even have a cost—or a benefit—it has to have been traded. It has to have been utilized in a market, in an exchange.

It has to have been subject to experience.

Relationships are all about negotiating each partner’s needs and wants. It feels kind of seedy to think of it as a debit-and-credit system, but it is a similar give-and-take. In healthy relationships, both partners do a good job of expressing their own needs, of fulfilling what they can for themselves, and of being able to rely on their significant other to be willing to fill in any gaps that they can. It’s delicately symbiotic. If any partner consistently takes too much or gives too little, it quickly shifts to parasitic, and one or both partners suffer as the relationship dies.

What is exchanged has both a cost and a benefit, which is totally subjective to each party to the exchange. That mystical, magical ratio is evaluated—sometimes over a long period of time, sometimes instantaneously—and out pops the worth for the evaluator.

When writing before about my own relationship goals—in early 2013 just before I met Bounder and again in 2014 just before I met Rango—the things I could articulate as wants and needs were themselves manifestations of more basic qualities of a person. I still agree with most of those desires, but I can see how those laundry lists are driven by providing relief from past experience. I cherry-picked moments from different relationships and looked for someone who could engage me in ways that were reminiscent of my past.

Now, though, I understand that the actions are expressions of traits I value in a romantic partner, and the worth I assign is based on my own lifetime of experiences, of gains and losses, and how I evaluate the costs and benefits of previous relationships. At the heart of each of those listed wishes, are there more basic attributes that I would value, regardless of the man who possesses them?

I value intelligence. Maybe it’s snobbish of me, but I just can’t date a stupid guy. It’s important to me to be able to engage in thoughtful conversation with my partner on a variety of topics both sacred and profane, and I don’t have the patience to have to define my vocabulary mid-conversation. I don’t expect someone else to know everything about the topics I do, nor would I want to know everything they know. But I thrive exchange of ideas, and that necessitates a certain intelligence.

I value patience. I am incredibly impatient. Motherhood has taught me a million ongoing lessons in patience, but I am still prone to jump headfirst into a moment without significant deliberate thought. (That tends to come after the fact, historically with self-recrimination.) It’s important for me to be with a partner who can remind me to slow down, who is willing to wade through my thought process to whatever realization I eventually come to. Sometimes I need the reminder to stay on task, in the moment.

I value expressive affection. In the realm of Love Languages, I have equal needs for quality conversation and physical touch. I both need to touch and to be touched. But there has to be emotion beneath the skin-to-skin contact. Hand-holding and hugs and random kisses are a physical manifestation of care and concern. I need to hear that I matter and why. Acts of service and gifts are nice, but they mean very little to me if they’re incongruous with words. For some people, outward expressions are difficult. For me, they are a necessity.

I value passion. Yes, sexual passion is incredibly important to me, but I also value a general passion for life. I want a partner who is passionate about his beliefs and his work, who combines them into a personal purpose. I love what I do, and it’s saddening when I meet people who don’t enjoy the work that consumes a third or more of their life.

I value compassion. Whether it’s toward me or toward themselves or toward the world at large, I find it valuable when my partner can feel and express empathy.

I value availability. Because I have a lengthy history with emotionally-avoidant men, I have been stood up, ignored, and dismissed more times than I care to remember. There are the logistics of availability, meaning our schedules have to match relatively well to be able to see one another. But emotional availability—a willingness and ability to be emotionally open and vulnerable—seems harder to come by. By this time of middle-aged dating, it’s virtually impossible to meet someone who doesn’t have some kind of damage. But I’m no longer willing to be trapped by someone else’s defenses.

I value bravery. Life is hard. Bad stuff happens. Sometimes it’s enough to make you want to shut down and crawl back under the covers until the world calms down. Everyone is afraid of hurt and failure and rejection. But there is strength in acknowledging the vulnerability that comes with fear and stepping forward anyway. I know the failures and the successes that come from facing your fears, and I cannot stomach another man who refuses to accept his own challenges.

Per our usual, Pandy and I have talked at length about my ideas of value. She asked me to turn the tables and think about what I’d want a partner to value in me.

“I don’t think it matters,” I told her.

I know what I value in myself, and that value comes from having paid a cost to become the person I am today. I also know what I value in someone else because of those same costs. I spent a lot of time getting my garden to grow. I weeded out the thorns, and now I’m culling the dead growth that could threaten to choke out my prize roses.

Someone else will have paid their own costs, had their own experiences before they come into my life. How they assess my worth to them will be based on their perceptions of their own needs and wants, their own successes and failures. Maybe my curiosity and quick smile mean more than my vocabulary. Maybe they place more value on my punctuality and dependability than on my tendency toward effusive, written expressions of emotion.

I’ve come to realize there’s something else that has its own set of values: the relationship itself. And what is valuable in one partner or another may not be at all what’s valuable in a relationship.

I’ll explore that topic in my next post.

This is the second in a three-part series. For the first post, please click here.

 

 

I was feeling insecure you might not love me anymore.

I’ve been listening to this podcast, The Overwhelmed Brain: Personal Growth for Critical Thinkers, a good bit for the last few months. The host, Paul Colaianni, is a personal empowerment coach, whose offerings of advice and perspective are usually in response to a listener’s email. I find his advice to be accessible and easily-understood. There always seems to be something personally relevant, even when the topic is not one I’ve felt bothered by before.

A recent episode, however, dealt with insecurity. I was driving home from work and thought, “Wow, that listener could be me.”

Oh wait. It is.

It actually was my email to the show. Because I do enjoy his approach, I had written in to see what perspective he might offer.

I have struggled off and on for years with jealousy. Sometimes that jealousy has resulted in extreme behaviors that I’m not proud of. But where does it come from?

“When you’re jealous,” Colaianni says, “there’s something that you believe that someone else is bringing to the table, or that you aren’t confident about in you.”

Jealousy is a manifestation of insecurity. For me specifically, I am emotionally insecure. I am often afraid that my partner (when I’m in relationship) will leave and emotionally abandon me. I do sometimes require more reassurance and emotional attention than others. I can be needy—though I argue that word is loaded with sometimes-unwarranted connotation that has often been defined by the emotionally avoidant men on the other side of my equation—and when those needs aren’t being met, I become anxious and activated. I’ll spend far too much time analyzing the occurrence that led to the anxiety, usually a conflict with my partner:

What did he say or do? Well, what did that mean? Is what I think it means different than what he actually said or did? Is there a disconnect between his actions and words? What was my role in the situation? What words or actions did I offer that exacerbated the situation, or made it better? What could I have done differently? What should I have done differently?

It’s easy for me to list my own faults in the situation. That leads to a list my own deficiencies, in general. And if he sees these things as flaws in me—which he must because they’ve made him mad enough not to talk to me after an angry exchange—then he knows it’s a flaw because he has an unflawed point of reference, which is almost always an ex.

At least that’s how my thinking has usually gone.

I have found myself spending an inordinate amount of time comparing myself to my partners’ exes. Rarely were they women I knew. I often knew a good bit about them, because they’d come up in early conversations about past relationships. More often, they were just these nebulous, vacuous ideas of what his life had been like before me.

Ghosts.

So, if there is conflict between my partner and me, it must be because I don’t measure up to his ideal. His ideal is based on his own past experience. That experience was defined by his exes. I must not be as good as they are. What he had before is what he really wants. He is likely to leave me to be with one of them, or someone more like them.

But this idea that his previous relationships were ideal is fallacious. If they’d been idyllic, they wouldn’t be past relationships at all—he’d still be in one of them. So those women may have had fantastic qualities, but somewhere something went wrong in how those two people related to each other. Usually what I do know about them comes as self-reported flaw. The men with whom I’ve been in romantic partnership are self-aware enough to admit to at least some cursory, palatable version of their own mistakes, and they can usually point out their former partner’s mistakes, as well. So I’m only comparing myself and my relationship to their admitted interpretations of events that occurred years before.

I have often gotten caught up in comparisons of physicality. Being a 5’11 Amazon, I am taller and bigger than most other women, even when I’m not struggling with my weight. I am a physical outlier, for sure, and that means that their previous partners were almost certainly smaller than I am.

Was she shorter and thinner than I? Probably. Was she prettier? Did she have better hair? Was she so physically attractive that she could get him to push past the emotional boundaries that prevent him from being fully present?

But Colianni cautions, “If you’re gonna compare something you’re insecure about, you don’t compare it to the people that appear to be perfect, because you’ll always be unhappy if you do that.”

Somewhere in my own head, these women became idealized by my partner. Whomever they actually were is still unknown to me; I am basing judgments about myself based on my perceptions of his perceptions (and very limited admissions of that time in his past) of this woman with whom he had an unhealthy relationship that ended in emotional trauma.

So, if I am already afraid that he will leave me, because that’s what I learned to believe people who loved me do, those fears are underscored by wholly unreasonable beliefs about my partner. Using that standard of comparison can only lead to skewed results.

The only standard of comparison should be me. But I have struggled for years with my sense of self-worth. I’ve written several times before about calculating my value. It’s all too easy for me to pick apart what I think is wrong with me. What do I think is right? What do I find valuable in myself?

I am smart. Tests have said I’m very intelligent. I know a lot of information, and I am very adept at making connections between data, extrapolating further meaning. I enjoy learning, and I am constantly curious about new topics.

I am funny. I have a wicked sense of humor, though that’s somewhat subjective. I love to laugh, especially with other people about absurd moments we share together.

I am tenacious. It’s not just I go after what I want—at least once I make my mind up about what that is. I am unlikely to give up when I run into challenges. It’s what got me and my sons through the last five years.

I am brave. I have fears. Some are rational, some are not. But rarely do I let that fear stop me. If what I want is on the other side of that fear, I will find a way.  Sometimes I’m able to make friends with the fear and sing it to sleep, so I can step lightly past it. Sometimes I have to whip out my Vorpal sword and go straight through it.

I am loving. I feel deeply, and I express those emotions readily. I also try to act on those feelings. I try to do things and behave in ways that express my care and concern and affection. Admittedly, this sometimes butts up against my fears, and I can raise my defenses to try to keep people from hurting me. But I can never maintain that distance for very long, because I feel the people I love, no matter what.

I am self-aware. I have spent a lot of time getting to the root of my own heart. Much of that journey has been documented openly on Muchness and Light. Whether through therapy or conversations with friends or while I was on some meditational walk, I have learned who I am and what makes me tick, both good and bad.

Were those other women those things? Maybe. Were they as smart or funny or brave? Maybe. Maybe not. Did they share his same interests? Probably. Only his interests? Unlikely. Did they have insecurities? Probably. Were they able to put aside their own insecurities and needs, making him comfortable enough to be secure and happy with them? Obviously not for long, if they were.

But really, none of that matters.

All I can do is strive to be the best plausible version of myself. Trying to be the best possible leads me down a path of perfectionism and self-criticism. I will almost never live up to social ideals, nor to anyone else’s personal ideals. It’s taken me a long time to come to understand what is valuable about myself, to myself. The best way for me to honor that is to act in ways that support rather than undermine my value, and that includes the behavior that I will accept from others.

But I still have insecurities that sometimes are at least a catalyst for conflict within relationships.

Be vulnerable, Colaianni offers. Sharing my insecurities gives my partner the opportunity to access one of four things within himself:

• Compassion
• Acceptance
• Apathetic ignorance
• Judgment

Sometimes they’ve been compassionate about it, at least for a while. Really, though, it’s easy to offer sympathy and kindness to someone who reveals they’ve been abused. It’s rare that I’ve met an asshole who said out loud that abusing others was acceptable. And it’s not the abuse, per se, that is still an ongoing issue, but rather the tangential aftershocks that continue for so long—the fear, the sometimes-constant anxiety, the ways in which the abuse colors almost every decision the victim makes from that point forward.

Once my partner realizes the damage left me with more than just some shit to talk about over drinks, it’s very rare for their attitude to remain compassionate or to shift toward acceptance. When I asked to stop once during a romantic moment—unexpectedly triggered by a brush of a hand that felt all too terribly familiar—that partner yelled at me that the past is in the past and that I should just “get over it.” Needless to say, I didn’t see him again.

Most often, I’ve been met with apathetic ignorance. They don’t want to know, and they don’t want to care. Rango specifically told me my shit was my problem, to work on it by myself, and to keep it away from him. He was actually more verbal about it than most. My experience is that most of the emotionally avoidant men I’ve dated tend to pretend my damage doesn’t exist, distancing themselves when they realize I won’t be all rainbows and light all the time.

But, Colaianni stresses further, It’s a choice in them, not a problem with me. It’s a problem in me when I devalue myself because of it.

“They are choices, and they are in them. Because if you show up owning what you’re insecure about and being okay talking about it, now the ball’s in their court. They have to do something about it. They have to make a choice. Whatever’s going on at that point is going on in them.”

This is where my choice to value myself outweighs their choice. In a healthy relationship, I’ll be met with compassion and acceptance; I’ll be supported and actively loved (not just thought of affectionately). If I am again faced with apathetic ignorance or judgment, that is a huge red flag that I cannot ignore. It signals a conflict in values that is likely insurmountable and wholly unhealthy for me.

And if I expect anyone else to treat me with compassion and acceptance, I must do the same. I cannot apathetically ignore my own needs and must find ways to meet those needs myself. I’ve spent years hurling judgment from within, and many of my bruises and scars were self-inflicted. No one else is allowed to hurt me, and neither am I.

But my needs and assessments alone are not the entirety of the relationship. By definition, I have to be relating to something else, and that happens to be someone else. So if I know what I value in myself, what do I value in that someone else? What happens when those values clash, and is it fatal to the relationship?

This turned into a much longer, more in-depth process of thought than I’d imagined when I emailed The Overwhelmed Brain. I’m turning this into a three-part series on Value. Stay tuned.

 

 

 

Burn up a basement full of demons. Realize you're a slave to your mind. Break free.

A couple of weeks ago, in her perpetually optimistic way, Goldilocks suggested I give Finn a call.

“No. Absolutely not,” I responded.

“But why?” she pressed. “You guys got along so well. Maybe his schedule has eased—”

“No.”

When I told Pandy about the suggestion, she replied that she would be in agreement with Goldilocks.

But here’s the thing:

 As I see it, one of two things happened. Either I did have significant personal value to Finn, and he wasn’t able to communicate that or to make time for it (for me), or I wasn’t worth to him what he had previously indicated, and he wasn’t able to communicate that and bow out respectfully. Either way, he all but stopped reaching out to me. Even when I questioned whether his schedule would allow time for dating me, he assured me it did. But then it didn’t, given his line of work and the time of year. Rather than say, “Hey, I’m really sorry this is the exact thing I assured you it wouldn’t be,” he just let it drop until I made the call to see other people. Although I said I had no intention of cutting him off from contact and would still like to hear from him, there was nothing from him. After a month of radio silence, I did indeed add him to the ever-growing list of IGNORE THIS ASSHAT contacts in my phone and put him on permanent DND.

This was wholly indicative of much of my dating life the last five years. Sure, potential relationships dwindle, and other things are more important sometimes. Sometimes people realize they aren’t as interested as they’d initially believed. I’ve been on both sides of that. I’ve had dating plans hijacked by daily logistics.

And I admit to having ghosted on people, though never anyone I’d been dating for several weeks, as Finn and I had.

I find it to be cowardly behavior, and I’m tired of dating cowardly lions.

There’s no justification for my own cowardly action at times. Reasons, not excuses. Yes, it’s hard to say to someone that you’re just not feeling it, especially when you know first-hand the feeling of rejection that comes on the other side of that exchange.

But to say to someone that they are important, that they matter, that you enjoy your time with them and want more—with only them—and to then just let it dwindle is cowardly. That person must either keep putting up with feeling like an unimportant option because of your actions, or the other person must be brave enough to admit that their worth is higher than the value of your passive-aggressive rejection and make the call to end it.

That’s exactly what I did. Given my history of holding onto decaying relationships far past their natural expiration, especially to the detriment of my self-worth, it was strange to make the decision and carry through with it. It was uncomfortable as hell and felt a little arrogant to say to someone that their actions were unacceptable and to stop accepting them.

Breaking that cycle, not doing things the way I always have and letting the relationship drag on ad nauseum, is part of my redemption of my past. I can’t control what other people do. I have some control over what I feel about it. But I have complete control over how I react to their actions.

Part of the pathology of anxious attachment style is a repetition of the past, of constantly striving for some kind of cosmic do-over in which it eventually doesn’t turn out the same way it always has. Another part of the pathology is being attracted to emotionally-unavailable men—especially those who want desperately to believe that they are available and thus initially convince me that they are. But if I am always doing the same thing, so are they.

I’m by no means the first woman to be hurt by those men, and I likely won’t be the last. And here’s where I am trepidatious of my dating future. I don’t know what it will take for me to believe that someone else is telling me the truth—not some hopeful aspiration, but honest truth—that they 1) are willing and able to engage in a healthy relationship and 2) can maintain that healthy relationship when things get complicated and difficult, even if the relationship has to come to an end.

I am more jaded now than I was five years ago, and that’s part of the reason I’m choosing not to date right now. It’s not fear of rejection or disillusionment with love or men in general. I don’t want my jaded perceptions to establish expectations of others before I’ve given them an opportunity to truly engage me. I don’t want to go into a date with a half-hearted, cynical view, because it would never give that other person a fair shot at getting past my other defenses.

I get that I tend to dive inward deeper than most people are ever willing to go. My expectations of my own self-discovery and -exploration are so high that it would be unreasonable to expect that same of anyone else. But dammit! It irritates the hell out of me when people are too afraid to try to move past their pasts, to be too afraid to confront their own failings and shortcomings and to try to learn from it.

It’s hard as hell to admit that you have a role in the demise of your relationships. In my experience, it is never only one partner’s fault. Ever. No matter the circumstances. But to choose to hide your eyes and cover your ears to avoid your own truths, especially when you know it will mean you’ll continue to make the same mistakes over and over, hurting other people in the process, is utterly nonsensical to me.

Right now, I am reticent to believe that I will ever meet that man, who is brave enough to choke down his fear and really face himself, especially if it means having a clearer view of me. Right now, I’m not sure I would even recognize him. I don’t know that I could see past my own jaded expectations to see someone else clearly, and I’d likely end up right back in that same cycle of infatuation and rejection and hurt.

So I’m taking the time change my own views, which includes evaluating my own worth only through my own lens. I can’t adequately gauge my value by someone else’s metric. It’s hard. Sometimes it’s a little lonely.

But there is also freedom from expectation, of my self or of someone else, and so there is hope that I will be able to do it all differently, someday.

 

 

 

Related articles

How silent treatment is used as a defence - Andrea Harrn Counselling Services

A million lights are dancing, and you are a shooting star.

As I wrote about a few weeks, I have been seeing someone new. I won’t wax poetic here; it’s simply too early to exalt him to the status of Blog Fodder, in and of himself. I hadn’t necessarily intended to get into a relationship—though maybe it’s still too early to even call it that—while also trying to work on my own stuff, much of which was highlighted and exacerbated by the ending of my relationship with Rango. But the fact is he presented as an opportunity worth exploring while I was beginning the process of self-reintegration.

Whether coincidental or due to some meaning I have assigned (or even thanks to that fickle bitch Fate), there are things about him that remind me strongly of Bounder. He is not another alcoholic, though he may well be overcoming a history as a dismissive-avoidant. He is not Bounder, however, and it is unfair of me to make direct comparisons. They are two different men, with different histories and stories, but there are moments that are striking, to say the least.

Because of this thing with Finn (so named because he is my huckleberry) and because of the end with Rango and because I sometimes pass him driving on the road between our houses, Bounder has been on my mind a lot. A lot a lot. It makes sense that he would be, but it set me off on a path of re-analysis and overthinking (again). I think I’ve dissected that relationship for the millionth time over the last few weeks, still looking for where exactly I went wrong. Because his shit is his shit—I can’t control how he acts or reacts or fails to act—all I can do is try to figure out what I screwed up. He told me numerous times that it wasn’t me, and I generally believe that, but I always dissect to the point of vivisection, flaying myself to a bloody, psychoanalyzed mess.

I do remember getting a text from him, a couple of days after we’d met. He said he was glad we could take things nice and slow. Except we didn’t. We started intensely, quickly, and that’s exactly how it continued. Within two hours of that text, I was making out with him in the parking lot of his office, a quick drive-by on my way home.

And that is where I failed him. Hurricane Sassafras was coming, no matter what he did. I didn’t really hear him and slow down. It wasn’t terribly caring on my part, no matter how unintentional the push was.

Finn also said he wanted to go slowly, I have tried to honor that. I have tried to dial back my impulses to forge full-steam into his world. There is something there worth exploring, and I don’t want to do it all in hindsight.

Which brings me back to Bounder.

Working within the IFS model, I have become very mindful of my feelings. I don’t just mean my emotions. When I feel something—anger, grief, sadness, longing, affection, attraction, love—I take note of where in my body I am processing the emotion. There is usually a physical locus of that energy. Because my strongest emotions are often tied up with what a subpersonality is processing in a given moment, I feel them in different places, which is effectively where each of those subparts resides. Harley and Quinn and Stephie and each of the others sits in a specific spot and pulls on my center from her point of reference. When I feel a subpart whose name I don’t know (who maybe I didn’t even realize existed) pull at my center, the emotional and physical feelings are often coupled with anxiety.

Because there has been so much thought of Bounder over the last few days and weeks, my anxiety has been really high at times. It has often felt like a pull from the right of my stomach. Sometimes it has been so bad that I would get nauseated and irritable, desperate to make the pain stop.

“What is that she’s feeling?” my therapist asked. “She may just want you to acknowledge her feelings. Can you tell what she wants?”

“She wants relief,” I replied. “She is hurt and angry and confused. She doesn’t understand how anyone could have something so precious as that kind of love in their damn hand and just walk away. It makes no sense, and it’s infuriating.”

This, of course, is wholly indicative of my fear of emotional abandonment. While that’s rooted deeply in my childhood, the feelings of hurt and betrayal and confusion are never more profound than when I think of Bounder. While I’m still angry at Rango for how he handled the boys during our break-up, I have dealt with my feelings toward him, kept what I needed to keep and shed the rest. Same for DH and Rex and others whose names and memories don’t really matter or impact me all that much anymore.

I explained to my therapist that the feelings are seated in this very specific location, that they can be overwhelming at times. And when I am most overwhelmed by something, I tend to dive into it head first, hoping to reach the bottom quickly and resurface cleansed.

But that never seems to happen with him, and I am forever in a loop of self-flagellation.

“Well,” she said, “first of all, she needs to know that you are simply witnessing the trauma again, a memory of it; it’s not actually happening again. You’re not being traumatized again.”

Okay. Just a ghost. Not real. Not happening now.

“And,” she continued, “she doesn’t have to feel that anymore. You don’t have to feel that anymore. That’s a lot of burden to have been carrying around for so long. She can let it go. You can let it go. Let the elements have it—they can take it—they can take a lot more than that. But she doesn’t have to feel that anymore.”

Wait—WHAT?!?

Even I could tell that my facial expression shifted in that moment. I was stunned, utterly baffled by the idea that it was okay not to keep feeling those emotions over and over, effectively retraumatizing myself every time. I have dealt with it repeatedly, and there is no healthy in dragging the futility of it all around, night after night.

And it makes sense. I had stopped feeling similar things for others long ago, in a healthy timeframe and in healthy ways. Why is he so special that I should continue to carry that burden?

In part, I think, it’s because he wouldn’t. Part of what happens during the emotional abandonment is that I’m left to feel whatever with no support, and I’m the only one feeling it. Maybe the other person is feeling something, but it never seems to be anywhere close to what I’m feeling, especially when the other person is a dismissive-avoidant who is so well-versed in compartmentalizing emotions away to protect themselves.

I have often railed against feeling like I was carrying it for both of us, because that was sometimes the only way to prove that the thing had ever happened, with no acknowledgement of grief coming from the other person. I am sure Bounder felt it in the darkest of times, but I know that he never faced me to tell me he was sorry for hurting me. His not acknowledging me and the hurt he created, his ignoring of me when he damn well knew it was the worst possible way to hurt me, made me feel worthless, especially to him. But that flew in the face of his telling me he loved me, of his moments of showing me deep, incredible love, and I could never reconcile the conflict of extremes no matter how much I psychologized him and myself.

But to think, to realize, that I don’t have to do that was foundationally shifting. I could feel the anxiety and the tension to the right of my stomach abate immediately. There was a deep sense of relief. She’s there, and she’s a little antsy about what she’s supposed to do now. If her job was to hold all that baggage, what is she going to do now that still allows her to be of use to the Self?

I had a dream once while Bounder and I were dating, one of those lucid nap dreams. I was standing outside a tall, wide, stone tower, trying to figure out how to get inside. I could hear a knocking from the inside, and I needed to let whomever was in there out. As I looked more, I realized the tower was his face, the details of his mouth and eyes and brows built from each brick. I climbed some scaffolding and began to chip away at this one high, white stone. It was the speck of light in his left eye.

Months later, he told me that I’d been like this force knocking on his walls, over and over and over, until he eventually poked his head out enough to see what was in the light.

I let light back into his darkness, and somehow that wasn’t worth staying for. And it’s not that I wasn’t worth it; it’s that he didn’t see himself as worth me. So convinced that he would hurt me in the end, he made it happen, pushing me unaware into the dark pool so that I felt like I would drown before I could resurface.

But in the same way I did it for him, I must do it for myself. I get to be the disco ball for myself, to reflect light and shine it brilliantly into my own dark corners. Disorienting and distracting at first, yes, but eventually it becomes a beautiful swirl worthy of dancing.

It is odd, a little unsettling, to think of life without the possibility of him. I gave up the possibility of him as a romantic partner long ago. Our life goals are different, and he would never be able to consistently meet my needs. But he was always this driving force of emotion and thought, even when we weren’t together, sometimes in contact and sometimes not. Music, in particular, became a daunting prospect for me, because everything could remind me of him.

And that’s her job now, that’s what she is supposed to do, to dance. She is lightened of her load. And she gets to pick the music she wants to dance to. She’s not trapped by the years-long playlists of Bounder songs. She doesn’t have to be afraid of hearing one of them in the grocery store and bursting into tears. She doesn’t have to listen for him in every new song. She can move freely again, not weighed down by his burden or mine. She can find the path that she lost, can move toward light and laughter and love, because she deserves that.

This wasn’t her fault.

And if we pass him on the road again? I don’t know. I could feel something; I could not. I may well never see him again. I’m not going to dwell on what might happen. Now I have different roads to explore and a different Stephanie to discover.

And there is dancing to be done.

 

 

Related articles

Let's have a disco ball, and let's be happy.

Save

You can be the outcast, or you can be the backlash of somebody's lack of love... or you can start speaking up.

NOTE: This post includes discussion of some pretty difficult subject matter, presented in an emotionally honest way. It may not be appropriate for all reading audiences.

At the heart of my myriad insecurities is a deep-seated fear of emotional abandonment. I am afraid that the people who profess to love me will stop caring, will decide that I am not worth their love and affection, and will dismiss me and my own emotions outright.

Physical abandonment is daunting enough, but it always seems to be symptomatic of a deeper emotional distance. DH left after our 19-year marriage crumbled, but that came only after he’d emotionally checked out of our relationship for years. I’d struggled to get Rango to engage in any emotionally significant way for more than a year before he told me he just wasn’t showing up for Max’s football game or my birthday. And when Bounder was most overwhelmed by the intensity of our relationship, he stood me up and distanced himself—at least until he decided he missed me too much to stay away—only to do it again and again.  

But the fear comes, plainly, from my childhood and adolescence.

I’ve written extensively about the sexual abuse I suffered as a child. There are at least six years during which I can remember being told, “Don’t tell anyone. You’ll be the one to get in trouble.” Years later, when I did finally tell—in the aftermath of a date rape at 16—I was left to deal with the physical and emotional impact on my own. Both the molestation and the rape were acknowledged very calmly for a few days, but there was no significant follow-up. I wasn’t sent to a counselor or therapist. I was sent, by myself, for my first pelvic exam to make sure I didn’t contract an STD.

My fear and my shame were dismissed, were boxed away so that someone else could handle what happened to me. My emotions were treated as if they were secondary and unimportant—or at least it seemed that way to me. With the exception of one close friend who literally held my hand through the process of telling, I never once felt that I was supported or cared for in those days and weeks.

I was scared and sick and confused and alone. When I most needed to be loved, the person who should have loved me most left me alone in my horror, pretending then and for most of the years since that none of it happened.

So what I learned from an early age, and relearned over and over and over, was that when someone loves you, then they leave you when your emotions are too much for them.

They leave you when you are too much for them.

Because they can’t handle what they’re feeling in response to what you’re feeling, it’s easier to pretend the feelings don’t matter or that there are no feelings at all. So while love is supposed to be this caring, beautiful, wonderful thing, for me it’s also tainted by hurt, twisted up with rejection and carelessness and neglect.

None of this is new. None of this is revelation.

What is new for me is the realization that the subpersonalities are afraid that I will emotionally abandon them. They are terrified that I will decide that they aren’t worth the trouble, that the help they try to provide is too much of a hassle for me to bother to listen to them. They are afraid of being ignored and dismissed. They are afraid that I will shut them all down, in turn becoming exactly what I fear most.

And my choices, my culpability, in all of my relationship failures make my trustworthiness questionable. My complicity in DH’s ignorance of me, which I would go on to rebel against in the most damaging of ways possible. My constantly shifting boundaries, allowing Rango to pull further and further away while I accepted the blame for his distance. And my tortured love for Bounder, whose kiss could make time stand still and the seas turn to sand—who I will still seek out when I feel utterly lost and alone, even though I know he will almost certainly let me down. The multitude of others, who said I mattered but then walked away with barely a glance over their shoulders.

Besides, I was the one who was making out with that guy the night of the rape. I was the one whose tiny body reacted with sexual arousal when touched inappropriately. While that is a totally normal physiological response, the behavior that wasn’t normal became utterly normalized. I knew things at an age when I should’ve been happily playing with my baby dolls and getting hugs goodnight instead of confusion and lies to deflect someone else’s blame.

They won’t love me anymore if I don’t do this thing that feels weird and wrong, being done to me by someone who says they love me.

Hurt was normalized. Secrets and shame were normalized. Pretending like nothing happened, like it didn’t matter, was normalized.

So if I have culpability or complicity in those hurts, who the hell am I to be trusted? How can my internal family trust me to make healthy loving decisions for them when I can’t even seem to make them for myself? How can I be trusted to do the right thing for any of us?

The difference in me and those who’ve hurt me is that I don’t want to be distanced from my emotions or anyone else’s. I don’t want to be ignored or dismissed, and so I try like hell not to do the same to anyone else. To disregard those parts of myself, to act as if my own emotions just don’t exist or matter, inflicts unbearable hurt. Shutting down, being numb again, silencing those inner voices entirely is the last thing I ever want to do.

I have to show myself the love and care that I expect from anyone else.

Integration can only come about if I trust the parts not to hurt me and vice versa. I have to honor what each feels, acknowledge each emotion I am ultimately feeling, and accept that the emotion itself is not the trauma. The traumatic events are over and done; the feelings are ghosts whose chains rattle me in a million directions at once sometimes, making me shaky on my feet. Making me insecure.

I may be moving forward, but I’m not leaving them behind. These parts of me, trapped at different ages and stages of development—disintegrated—deserve the chance to mature. They deserve the opportunity to grown into the woman they would’ve become had shit not gone horribly wrong.

I deserve the same.

Part of that maturation is coming to terms with the fact that it wasn’t my fault. I didn’t allow those other people to hurt me. I didn’t encourage them to devalue me and to dehumanize me. I didn’t ask to be sexually assaulted. I didn’t ask for them not to love and care for me.

It wasn’t my fault.

IT WASN’T MY FAULT.

I am worth love, and I am worth care and concern. There is nothing about me that is so inherently ugly or unlovable to have warranted horrid, difficult abuse. I was a sweet, smart, precocious little girl with Moonpie eyes and one dimple. I should never have been a sexualized object. I didn’t deserve to be molested. I didn’t deserve to be raped. I didn’t deserve to be smacked around and degraded by an angry boyfriend. I didn't deserve to be used and abused and discarded.

I never deserved being the target of someone else’s self-loathing and guilt.

I was worth more than dismissal and ignorance because I didn’t meet someone else’s expectations or conform to their fucked-up, dysfunctional norms. I am worth more than an eyeroll-and-sigh in toleration.

All of those bits inside me have fought to protect me from hurt, from allowing anything in that might cause more damage, But the fracturing of my personality into smaller parts left vulnerable cracks. Rather than fill the spaces with gold, like Japanese kintsugi, I often used whatever I could find: leftover packing tape ripped from an old dusty box… someone else’s half-chewed gum… desperate hope coated in blood and sticky mess.

But I was never going to be able to close my own rifts with someone else’s effluvia.

It’s up to me to find the healing from deep inside me, to let those internal persona who so badly want and need to help do just that. If the end goal is a whole Stephanie, the parts that make her up have to have a role in filling those gaps.

So I’m letting them talk, and I’m listening. I’m hearing what each of them says they need, and I’m doing my best to honor those wishes. I’m giving each an opportunity to share their respective visions of wholeness and then choosing what works best for all of us. For me.

It is a process to pick up the broken pieces and put them back together. It took years for the breaks to happen, for the dust to settle enough for clean-up to begin. But it has.

And it’s up to me to do that work.

It’s up to me to show myself the love and care that I need, and that starts with sweeping away everyone else’s pain and destruction and refusing to force my bits to fit with theirs.

It’s up to me to trust that I can do this.