Allowing myself to need

I had a big breakthrough in therapy this afternoon.  Slowly I am beginning to see how my childhood and the painful experiences of my adolescent and young adulthood pushed me into being alone and led me to deny my need for others.  Those I relied on to see me so often did not.  I did not feel truly seen by anyone in my later childhood and the sister I looked to most was feeding me alcohol from the age of 13 and so I had no where to go with what I felt deep inside and the need I had to be related to honestly and emotionally.

It’s hard for me to admit that I need others. I think a lot of people who end up with addictions look to those substance in the absence of others to relate to and because we start to use this method of numbing our true feelings in the end we have a great emptiness inside that we carry around not knowing that we do.  We are enigmas to ourselves and then we confuse others with our strange reactions and defences.

Even when I got sober in 1993 I found it hard to reach out and sadly the person I began to relate to was emotionally absent to me.  I was on the receiving end of a lot of preaching and philosophising and was told all the time the only person I could really rely on was me.  To a degree in the end we are the only person who will never leave us as even if others stay emotionally true they may die or have other priorities at times.   This person was the same age as my older sister who I idealised and idolised for many years, without realising how wounded she was and incapable of giving me what I needed and then as so many of us do I blamed myself or just swallowed that philosphy that it was better to be alone.

Anyway today the realisation broke through that I do need others and to connect and there is a longing to that  with certain members of my family, sadly some of these relatives don’t reach out much and are not emotionally connected to themselves so how can they be connected with me?   The nephew I am closest too is slowly recovering from his operation and rang me last night.   But I am aware that due to the fact we all impacted upon the legacy of the multigenerational trauma of active addiction we all carry wounds.  I still long for that missing relationship with a kind loving brotherly or father figure.

Luckily I have one or two friends I can turn to lately as my emotional recovery and awareness grows but it is still to my own loving inner adult that I am learning to turn these days.  I am still hoping that in years to come I will find another person or love I can relate to and be inter dependent with, someone healthy.  None of my past partners were healthy for me, I realise this now and when I met someone who was a few years ago I was just not ready for that relationship, sadly as I had healing work to do.

I was really glad for my breakthrough in therapy today.   It was hard at times to validate inwardly the abuse I went through in the last damaging relationship.  When it ended he dumped a lot of the blame on me, as I was actively working a recovery programme and going to therapy it was easy to say I was the wounded one and there was little attempt on his behalf to own a lot of what was done, although at times he would admit to it in a round about way.

I have been on my own for just over 7 years now and I can finally say I am learning to be my own best friend.  It may sound like cliché but until I can do that I know I will not be ready for love for anyone I meet will just be a reflection of the relationship I have or do not have with myself.   It’s in owning my own shadow, needs and hidden vulnerablities that I have come to see the light