Safe Place

This is a blog of sorts. I dump things here and look back at them when I want to reflect. If anyone ever stumbles upon it, you're welcome to stay a while and chat, leave comments or whatever.

Abandonment Issues... For real?

Sometimes you get depressed and you can't figure out what's getting you down. You push people away and hurt those you thought you loved, and you can't figure out why you keep doing this to yourself. 

 

I gave someone all I had under the guise of love, letting myself slip away under the impression that my whole heart must be sacrificed for this person. I never let myself question it, it would have been blasphemous. It would have put me on the edge of hurting the person I wanted so badly to protect. 

But now I am. Here I am, finally asking myself the real questions, after I broke a heart I had helped groom into complete dependency. Why did I let it get that far when I never really wanted it to? Why did I make so many promises I always knew I couldn't keep? I should have never tried to "fix" someone like I did. I couldn't change the things she had been through, but I should have known that the wounds would inevitably be deepened by leading her into hope for a future that I knew wasn't real.

I think I know the answers now. I hate this part of me, but I'm glad I'm becoming aware of it. I want to banish it before I hurt someone else. Otherwise, it's a downward spiral that could finish me off for good.

I wasn't just scared of being alone. I wasn't just young and horny and stupid. I needed someone I could help, because that was the only way I knew I had someone else's heart. If someone depended on me, they can never leave me. That is what my wounded heart told me. In the complicated mess it was, codependency is what gave me security.

How had I never realized how insecure I am? I always try not to contemplate the real reasons behind my behavior, believing that there are no such things as excuses. An excuse is always just a lie to hide behind when I make a mistake. That's really what I believed, and I'm trying so hard to change that mentality. The last person I need to invalidate my emotions is myself. 

Like the atoms that shape me, I crave stability. Everyone does, it's the way of nature. I tried to balance myself, after being abandoned so many times by the one person I always believed I could depend on since my very birth.

So many late nights waiting up until the crack of dawn just to hear the garage door opening. Hear her sighs as she limped up the stairs to bed. Finally, I would let myself sleep, knowing that my mother was safe and sound. One day, I finally worked up the courage to talk to her. I told her how worried it would make me, especially since she would never answer her cell. She said she didn't realize how much it was affecting me, and she promised that she would tell me before she leaves, and text me if she ever stays out later than planned. But as goes with addiction, it was all lies. She fell right back into the habit that very night. That one was the worst, because I had believed her, and the anxiety I felt when she disappeared once again was more than triple the usual. It either meant something bad had happened, or she had broken her promise. Either situation was enough to break me, and I think that night is what left me with this scar. 

It was more than hurtful. It was definitely traumatizing. And I need to let myself say that, instead of trying to make excuses for her. There are plenty of reasons for her to want to escape the way she did. My dad being a big factor, I'm sure. But this isn't about her, or him, it's about me. What her addiction did to me. How it's affected my relationships. How it led me into a place of dissociation and depression, even to the point of wishing nothing other than to end it all. How it led me to drag someone else into the mess she made of me and hold onto their dependency like it was the only thing I would ever need to be stable. 

I was in a new relationship before I even had time to register that the last one had ended. And I knew that I only had the courage to end it because there was someone else who told me they wanted me. I felt guilty about that then, but upon realizing how unhealthy our relationship was, I only wish it had ended sooner for both our sakes.

I am dating someone stable suddenly, with a stable home and a stable life ahead. And it's making me realize all the ways I tend to mistreat a partner because of my damned abandonment issues. It's so hard for me to just let him hang out with friends, not because I'm jealous of them, but because deep down I am afraid that it means he doesn't really love me whenever he spends his time with someone else.

I try very hard to communicate, and I've been able to talk to him about my feelings as much as I can understand them. And I have been mostly able to fight myself for his sake. But it's only recently that I've come to understand the root of these feelings, and I hope that now that I do, I can finally heal. 

It's much better than wanting to fight but not knowing what it is I'm fighting. It's better than wondering if I'm just batshit crazy. And it's better than believing that everything is my fault, that I'm just cursed. 

I have to stop caring about whether it sounds stupid to someone else. I have baggage, and I need to address it before it crushes me. 

I hope I can get out of this mess. I'm so sick of being drained and empty all the time.