How to be close? : daily reflections

Being alone can be a default setting for many of us, and its within the alone we can meet ourselves, if we don’t keep running, and yet there is a saying “no man (or woman) is an island”. Some nevertheless are more than comfortable with their lone wolf status or way of living, but who knows what wounds or earlier relational difficulties may have led us to there?… I have read several good books on avoidant and anxious attachment that show islands are people who are more comfortable keeping distance, spending a lot of time alone and identifying as apart from.. I don’t know how many of you have seen the move About A Boy but I watched it again on the weekend and its about one such man who, over time, opens up and learns the value of relating.

Empaths by their nature feel deeply and it may be that this tendency to feel deeply and sense into hidden things is seen as a threat by some and that too, may keep or set us apart. Empaths may also have been the highly sensitive kid or the youngest in a far older family who began to distance to observe a world out there we may not feel we necessarily related to, feel kindness from or could interact with easily or without pain.. I have noticed lately that the people I bond with most closely were often younger children of older, emotionally distant families…who in their lives had one relationship with a narcissist that burned or failed them significantly.. Such wounding experiences may set us up to vow never again to enter a romantic relationship out of fear of being hurt, and yet, not everyone will wound us. Such relationships often provide the necessary fuel for much soul searching and inner work.

Lately I have been going back over the past seeing how I slowly took distance in my marriage.. I found it more natural to spend time alone and when I got sober my primary relationship outside the one with my husband and family was with an older woman in recovery who was very wounded in the past, like me, and a loner. Over time she told me over and over that the deepest relationship in my life would be with God. In later years after several fallings out, she admitted to me she had become aware of her own narcissism and how she had wounded her daughter with it over time..I had seen the way she treated her daughter at times by cutting her off and it did distress me. Sometimes cutting others down or seeking distance may just be an avoidance or coping strategy for when buttons get pressed or triggers activated.

Many of you who have followed me for a time know how I have struggled to relate with certain members of my family, I look back now and think of the wounds that played out due to the different birth order and how we were individually wired, and its sad now that the two siblings left are the ones I sometimes feel I have least in common with.. That said I am learning to respect individual differences between us, over time.

I have nearly finished reading actor Alan Cummings autobiography Not My Father’s Son in which he struggles to come to terms with the rejection and abuse both he and his brother suffered at the hands of his father, Alex. In the book his father wrongly concludes that his wife had an affair and Alan was the result, this justified him in treating him abysmally and undermining him on every level. Later in life after a breakdown Alan explores his family history and feelings around his father and in time he and his brother confront him over his abuse.. The meeting never results in any thing less than denial by his father of the damage inflicted, although as they are leaving him, Alan does see his father shed tears..

I cried myself sharing all of this in therapy this morning. I could never completely blame my parents for their harsh treatment or emotional avoidance and neglect, due to knowing something of their own childhoods, which may have been worse for me in the long run, for I did blame myself and have been blamed by others for my own psychic injuries….just reading this back makes me super emotional.

In Al Anon family recovery we find forgiveness for the alcoholic or the abuser as we come to explore our own damage and own it…in fact I do believe the capacity to forgive never says what was done to us was right or even acceptable, but it does allow for the fact that we do live in an imperfect universe and also a universe in evolution. Corporeal punishment is not half as acceptable as it used to be, even in my childhood.. We were often hit with the wooden spoon or other flying objects, my older sister was hit over the face with a slipper then fell into a cupboard and broke both wrists, only to be told there was nothing wrong with her. She sufferer a bi polar diagnosis as a result of what was really carried multi-generational physical and emotional abuse.

All my anxiety over this happening on a bodily level comes to a head at certain times of day and most especially on Monday’s prior to therapy.. Today I was mute for most of the first 15 minutes on the phone, I have been having intense spins and severe blood noses over the past three days, its one of the reasons I was not able to write or articulate much over the past weekend except through poems.

Some days I weep for all of my failed attempts at getting close both to friends and boyfriends….that said I have not always chosen those with high level empathy either…and often my boundaries are violated or I have dropped them out of fear of abandonment early on in relationships, sadly. A long period of introversion has been essential to my inner work, especially after two men in my life seemed to negate my feelings all too often. But as I look back, I also see those who were actually there for me and I feared being close to anyway…I see how after the accident in the UK people tried to help me, many of them recognising and holding in empathy the painful feelings I was opening up to in the aftermath of my 11 year marriage ending. And the truth is, that I opened up as much as I could before making the painful decision to return home in 2005.

Self awareness and self forgiveness is taking time.. letting go of self blame over the things I was not yet conscious enough to know even longer. Kat said today that she feels I reverted back into that dark place of self negation and blame over the weekend, but my buried feelings were speaking to me through the nose bleeds as I struggled to walk Jasper, get out to the shopping centre and be a part of life, while watching two movies on avoidant attachment.. And maybe it doesn’t make sense to label myself in this way, after all I was severely wounded both in life and in relationship THROUGH NO FAULT OF MY OWN. Its just I don’t want to keep licking the bleeding wounds every day. But I relate best to those who recognise that who I am is fundamentally good.

Kat was saying that I am a valiant fighter in the search for emotional truth with regards to neglect and abuse and that it shows strength to try to continue to negotiate relationships with my immediate family members. So I am writing this today to attempt to articulate some of the strength it has taken for me to continue down this path… Things have been tough lately and some days it all seems too much (I know I struggle more in winter), and yet here I am still living, still breathing and still holding out hopes for relationships in which I can be vulnerable and take the risk to be close. For the sweeter gift than even 1,000 hours of solitude is that moment when you look into another human being’s eyes and feel both of your selves made most real, and fully known.