DUTCH GIRL




like a moth to a flame

2003-07-30 - 4:27 p.m.

It's so freaking hot again today. I'm melting .... but at least now I'm home, sitting in my basement with a glass of very cold white wine, listening to Macy Gray, so things are okay.

Shanny came over last night and we had a very interesting conversation which has kept me thinking all day long and leads me to some thoughts I'd like to try to put down here.

We were discussing the events of the weekend, both mine and hers, and she was filling me in on some thoughts she had after meeting this nice new man.

Who was it who said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over, expecting different results? Smart person, who ever he or she was. Why do so many of us seem doomed to repeat the same relationship mistakes over and over, thinking somehow this time it will be different? Why are we endlessly attracted to the same man. He might wear different clothes, he might have different hair and a different job (although not always) but he's the same man.

For some of us, it's emotional unavailability. For some, it's the brooding, artistic asshole type. For me, it's men who will love me for the moment, but who will always leave me in the end, because they weren't really all that interested in the first place (or something like that).

I think we're drawn, over and over, to some fundimental problem from our past, unually our childhood. Something we think we can finally solve. It's usually something you didn't get, something that wounded you profoundly and shaped so much of who you are now.

My biggest issue (or one of them - I have so many) is abandonment. When I take a good look at myself, I see that I always freak out when I think I'm going to be abandoned. I get desperate because I fear that somehow, everyone else will find love and I'll be left all alone. So I panic and I freak out and I push and I almost always end up pushing the person right out of my life, thereby fulfilling my greatest fear - abandonment. And even when they haven't actually abandoned me, I feel like they have. Then the walls go up. I get angry and mean.

I want these men I fall in love with me, to profess undying love for me in the face of the most impossible situation. I'm married. I'm not really, truly, available to them and yet I want them to ignore that and say they're always going to love me and never leave me. What the hell????

And I have so much trouble trusting. I always assume, when it comes right down to the crunch, they're not going to be there for me. They're going to choose someone else over me. I got married for the simple reason that someone chose me. I didn't really love him in the way I should have, but it felt so safe. Am I really now going to become the one who abandons?

And where does this all come from? I guess it's complicated, but I know one thing. My mother chose someone over me when I was 12 years old, and continued to choose him for the next 10 years. She moved out, leaving our family, to be with him. I had to cope with a father who was an emotional wreck, a younger brother and sister who needed me to set the example. I had to learn how to cook and buy my own christmas presents and hold my dad's hand while he cried. And even when my mother moved back home, with the new husband in tow, she still chose him. He and I never really got along. Our relationship was brutal on the best of days, By the time I moved out, when I was 18, we hated each other. Once I was living on my own, he would write me letters, telling me all the things that were wrong with me and how, if I just fixed them, I could come back into his good graces and the embrace of my family. When I couldn't do it, he told my mother I wasn't allowed in the house and she wasn't allowed to speak about me in his presence. And she went along with it.

He and I actually speak now. Now that he and my mother are divorced, but I still find myself trying to win his approval, knowing I'll never do it and shouldn't even fucking care now.

And I can't ever quite forgive my mother, even though I love her. She taught me that even the person you love most, who should love you most and do anything to protect you, will choose someone else's happiness over yours.

(At this point, one would perhaps think I should be in therapy. In reality, I have been, twice. So I know all these things about myself. Doesn't mean I always deal with them very well. All I am is an informed idiot most of the time.)

And then, of course, there was the ultimate abandonment. My brother died when he was 25 years old. He was my best friend and my protector. Through all the hell of our childhood, he found a way to look after me. When I was 13 or 14 years old I used to have terrible night terrors. I would imagine that people were coming into our house to kill everyone, and shit like that. Even though he was only 11 or 12, he would come lie on my bed and tell me wonderful, beautiful stories until I fell asleep and then he would creep back to his own room. Who does that? Don't get me wrong, we fought like all syblings do, but he was always there for me. When my first real love dumped me and broke my heart, he would call me up in the evening and say "shit, you're sitting at home feeling sad. Come out dancing with me and my friends" and he would come pick me up and take me out and dance all night with me, not even paying much attention to his friends and the girl he was with. And he was 22 years old at the time.

He fell 75 feet off a mountain and died 2 weeks later from a blood clot that stopped his big, kind, gentle heart. And left me alone.

So, here I am, all these years later, looking for someone to prove to me that I'm not alone. That they won't leave me, no matter what. And ... you guessed it ... it never works out that way. Because it can't. Because I won't let it.

There's a line from a movie - I hate to admit that it's Pretty Woman, but what the hell - that keeps ringing around in my head. "Impossible relationships. That's my special gift."

And the saddest thing is that I did try to break that pattern when I married T. But for all the wrong reasons and in all the wrong ways. Running from abandonment to abandonment to the safety of someone I didn't really love, so who could never really hurt me in that way, sure wasn't the answer, was it?

I don't know where this all leaves me right now. Except maybe a little bit wiser. I know I need to find some way to let go of some of this. To trust other human beings and not expect so damned much from the first person who finds me interesting in any way. I'm saddling them with an impossible load.

On a brighter note, the experience of writing this journal has already been mind-blowing, and in a big way it's restoring my faith in humanity. I've learned things about complete strangers and connected to them in really interesting ways. There are some kick-assed women writing here in diaryland. I've learned that I'm not all alone in these crazy things I feel and do. Reading people's inner thoughts has helped me put mine into some kind of perspective. Thanks gals (you know who you are).

Well, time to go pick up Shanny for another evening of wine and Trivial Pursuit. When oh when am I going to finish the data entry on this computer that's now more than a week overdue?

Vorig - Daarna

Layout by Neko.