Ghosts of Christmas past

I guess we all have them, ghosts of Christmases past. Mine is the sudden illness of my father and abandonment by my partner just before my 23rd birthday, and my father’s death to follow within 2 weeks. My sister and I had a rare dinner with my brother last night, who flew into town for 5 days. We haven’t seen him all year and he hasn’t done much to sort out my mother’s estate and is flying out to America for his usual 4 month sojourn on the 31st. I tried last night just to love him where he is and enjoyed the dinner though the conversation primarily revolved around his family, or my sister’s oldest son. I got asked two questions I think. Anyway that’s all beside the point, as usual I buried my feelings, cried in the loo and when I got home with Jasper. It is what is is and I cannot change it.

Hovering over this Christmas is the shadow of the ghost of my anxious attachment. I am noticing it is very close to the surface right now. It was this time last year Scott was supposed to be arriving and the bank chose to freeze the account of the ‘agent’, later in January another of my accounts was frozen. He never got here and we tried to get him out for the rest of the year. Then in September the ‘agent’ came forward to say it was a scam and so that is another ghost, but now there is a new connection I am noticing the fears I have as well as the legacy of no close intimate valuing relationships with men in my life.

My new friend Steve let me down twice in the past month and failed to show up two times with an excuse. It really took me down at the second time. I noticed today when I went for a walk with Jasper this voice in my head telling me it will sabotage any relationship and not let anyone get close to me ever again. I have never heard this voice quiet as clearly pronounced and audible as it was today and I actually felt it in my body. Then on our walk to the oval there was a man there with his two dogs and it disturbed our run around with ball throwing. I noticed the usual anxiety I feel around the opposite sex in any occasion. I just DONT TRUST THEM and I long for a meaningful connection at the same time. There I have articulated it.

I know this anxiety and fear of being hurt my men lies very deep within me. It makes me cry while writing but its better to voice it. At least if I know what I am carrying I will be in a better position to deal with it. I don’t know if it goes with the lack of attunement I felt with my Dad, associated to the fact he never protected me against Mum’s rages and control, but I know it has bled into all of my following associations with men. I felt a shadow too, the other day of mis-attunement with someone I had hoped was not going to be like this. I ended up having to caretake their feelings, its made me doubt the way I react as well as their capacity to empathise. They mentioned how they want fun not sadness and that was a trigger as my ex husband left me telling me I was too sad which really broke me, at the time I was trying to deal with years of unresolved grief emerging in sobriety around my father and so many other emotional traumas.

I also don’t have a therapist to call on for the next two weeks, it bites me they go away at one of the hardest times of year, it really does. I went to an Al Anon meeting yesterday and today I will go to an AA meeting at 5.30 to at least get some containment as I am having Christmas Day all alone with Jasper. I am actually fine with it though at times I feel some pain and self pity stealing which I must work to not take me down.

It was in the early hours of Christmas morning that Mum had to take my father into casualty after the area of his operation to remover cancer ruptured. She didn’t wake me and then came back and in her usual push on stoical fashion made Christmas dinner for the entire family. I thought of my ancestors name Trudgeon last night after by brother was sharing more about our families hard arsed attitude to life. Trudge On no matter what the cost, keep your feelings under wraps and just bury it all. Sorry if it seems harsh but the drinking and over eating goes along with it.

At this time of year my ancestors were on board a huge ship bound for New Zealand with their three children, one only a baby of 6 months who died shortly after they landed in Lytleton in March 1875. My great great grandfather was carrying the grief of a mother who died when he was only 12 and the realisation he would probably never see his father or land of his birth again. Interestingly my mother passed away on the day they embarked for 3 month voyage : 12 December. Some of the last words I heard her say as she struggled to stand were “I must get going.” The ancestors and possibly my dead father and sister and her best friend who passed a year or so before were calling her ‘home’.

All of these ghosts are here and they are realer than real to me. My ancestral fate is clear to me and explains to me too why my living sister and I are alone also now without partners (my great great grandmother ended up leaving Thomas my g g grandfather due to his alcoholism and rages). My brother’s family was never ruptured in the way ours was by the events that transpired from 1979 when I nearly died to 1985 when my father passed. I was sent to the other side of the world carrying it all… such a terribly terribly lonely journey.

AND the truth is I have survived. The five other relationships with men who would leave me when the going got too tough and I was too much of a handful or ‘too sad”, is it any wonder I fear opening my heart fully again? And to think I blamed myself for what I was carrying not even really knowing I was carrying it and yet I have also been responsible to learn about its impact.

Today I will take my cousin out for lunch, today I will not sit only in the sadness for I know the ghosts of Christmas past are only temporary visitors. I am the one who bore witness and who knows maybe 2020 will mark my year of freedom from the ancestral stuff? I am praying, options are opening up, I just have to break the strangle hold of death and negation on my soul at times. Or else it may be I am fated to live very close to the silence of the wholeness and the collective unconscious alone, I just don’t know. I wish to find a way to let me spirit live free of the heavy yoke of a past that I am trying my very very best to emerge out from under the heavy weight of. Watch this space.