I have been reading a book called The Journey from Abandonment to Healing. Well, ok, I'm only three pages into it, but it is as if this were a book meant for me at just this particular time in my life. On page three of the preface it reads:
Without guidance, many people don't completely recover from the loss of a love. Their fears and doubts remain unresolved. True recovery means confronting uncomfortable feelings, understanding what they are, and most importantly, learning how to deal with them.
There are some feelings no one wants to talk about because they involve fear, despair, and self-doubt so intense that you're naturally humiliated and ashamed by them. This shame is not just about the embarrassment you may feel over having been rejected; it is about feelings that bewilder you with their potency, induce panic, and have you believing you are weak, dependent, unlovable, even repulsive.
These two paragraphs are like a gift from God validating my feelings about my recovery from grief and codependency. All year I have been on a quest to get to the bottom of the mystery of my marriage. How did I end up with an emotionally unavailable sex addict? What patterns from my childhood have fucked me up so bad that my relationship failed?
It feels blunt to say the truth.
It feels naked.
But I have to be glad that the end of my marriage was a strong enough catalyst to make me examine my life. I have to be glad I have been given this chance to grow. The person I am becoming is so much more vibrant and exciting than the person I was, the person who covered up her pain with a smile and who ignored her problems by staying too busy to think.
I just wish the process wasn't so uncomfortable.
The power words from the second paragraph of the book that strike me the hardest are shame, rejected, panic, and repulsive. That's how it feels. Rejection sends me to a place where I am repulsive; when I realize I feel this way I tumble down a shame spiral. If I were smarter, stronger, braver, more attractive I wouldn't feel this way. I would be able to see the truth. And finally--the fear of being rejected again sends that wave of panic, terror almost, through my body and into my chest, lungs, and shoulders. I tense and hold my breath, my voice reaches a higher register, all because I am afraid of being rejected again.
It's interesting to think about how this pain of abandonment dwells in most of us and, myself included until last year, mostly we struggle along through life pretending we are not in pain, pretending to be satisfied with life.
It is the fear, the panic, the terror, of abandonment that raises our triggers, drives us to escape our pain.
I escaped my pain of abandonment while in my marriage by staying busy, socializing too much, working too hard, focusing on sex with my ex, and drinking with friends too often. My body tried to wake me up by being sick from stress related illnesses, by falling into a depression.
My triggers are working now. More, probably than during my marriage. They are working to protect me from future relationships, future pain. They flare up--and it is that word again: terror.
I talked about this with a couple friends last night at a New Year's Eve dinner out on the town. We were dazzling-- all gold, silver, and curly--and we were all single. We talked about how we've been pushed away by people who have been hurt, how we push away too in our own ways, how we put up barriers before we get too close, how we sabotage relationships before they begin in order to end them before we can really get hurt. We all agreed it had to stop somewhere.
Later, after champagne and noisemakers, we made our way to a night club. I spotted a group of men dancing at the back--they were cute, well-dressed, well-groomed, and dancing with each other. I was ready to join the party. My friend Jodi came to my elbow and dragged me away, saying, "I think you're putting up barriers again. You're dancing with the gay guys." Oh yeah, I'm supposed to find a man who might be interested in me.
Fear of abandonment hurts my life. I know I am not alone... the yorkie poo feels it too. When I first brought him home and left him alone for the first time, fear of abandonment welled up in him in panicked barks and yips and yawps and whimpers.
It feels the same way in my heart.
(the yorkie poo has now crawled over my computer in order to be even closer to my head, to my heart.)
While the pain of rejection makes me feel like a wreck, like someone whose 650 page manuscript has just flown out the back seat of the car onto the freeway, I am convinced it will make me a stronger person. More than that, the awkward, clumsy process of uncovering the truth doesn't have to make me feel like a ridiculous loser (as it often does). It means I am brave enough to face who I am, who I was, and who I want to be.
It means I am strong enough to choose a better version of my life.
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