organized in every other way but my attachment
It's almost bed time so I'd better write for the day. Why do I feel like a 60 year old grandma, as a 39 year old single woman without kids? Maybe I'm thinking of my grandmothers, when I knew them. I would have been very young so they could have been around my age. Funny how important role models can be. How damaging the lack of them.
I'm stepping into moving on. I guess I didn't want to. But it's important. I don't want to get stuck in grief. Marie is beside me chewing on an empty paper towel roll. I let her until she starts to eat little bits off of it then it goes in the trash. She likes when I make it into a trumpet and she likes the novelty of something to destroy. She is doing so well and is so smart and getting really great at riding in the car and being in public and walking around stores.
I'm still feeling the absence of having 'a person'. Someone to talk to about nothing. Someone at least saying, if not showing, that they liked me. I watched an interesting video on my attachment problem today, she was explaining why someone like me might try to get back into a relationship after they ended it. I really appreciate the chance to see this from another perspective, especially that of the other person in a relationship with someone with similar struggles to my own. She said that, essentially, the main reason would be because they were getting *something* from being with that person that they are now missing. Whether thats a kind of reassurance, or comfort, or something more nefarious like monetary assistance or attention/ admiration. Once some time passes, they might miss that thing that was working out well, and sort of forget whatever problem led them to break up in the first place. I guess thats a fair assessment, but it feels simplified and vilifying. For example, I couldn't be with the last person I was wanting to be with, because his words and actions didn't match up, he wouldn't commit to even wanting to date me and for the short time we dated he acted as if we weren't by doing things like keeping the dating app on his phone and going on long trips alone, and he absolutely would not show that he heard me and cared about my abandonment issues which were being antagonized by the above and other things he was doing.
But I would get back together with him when he would suddenly show extra interest in knowing me, become extra reassuring and loving, have long conversations with me that felt like he was going to grow into being considerate and we were getting to a place of mutual understanding and care. I missed that feeling, someone caring that I exist. I missed him, the way he spoke and moved and talked and thought. I missed having someone say I mattered to them, even if I didn't see evidence of that being true. It wasnt like a kid dropping and picking up a toy with disregard, it was from a place of vulnerability and every time I broke up with him it hurt me immensely, but I also always did it because I felt like it was already over and that he had already pulled away or never met me in love in the first place. I was believing one thing, feeling it, then being convinced of another and reacting to that then missing the original feeling and belief.
I also don't like for people to know this, but I am extremely responsive to other people's feelings. It takes time to sink in. So, someone telling me they're absolutely certain we should be together will have an impact on my belief one way or the other, even if it's a while before it affects me. If I can avoid hearing that kind of message, I can move on a lot better. But if I'm still being told by the other person that it can be fixed, all the issues can be worked on, that what matters is that we love each other, that they do in fact love me no matter what evidence I'm looking at that's sending me the opposite message... well, I will very likely go back to them after a little time has passed and their words are still ringing in my ears. It's what I want to believe. It's what I wish was true. It's so hard to stand strong in the face of the one thing I have always longed for, supposedly being right in front of me, according to the only person who could give it to me. Love. I want to be loved.
So, I don't know. It's easy to say that breaking up with someone is hurtful. It is. But if you're only doing it when you're already hurt to the point of feeling like it's the least damaging option, then that's worth acknowledging too.
It's always been similar for me, in all of my fraught on and off again relationships. Different concerns, different vulnerabilities, but ultimately I'm hurt, confused, and shifting back and forth just trying to find the most loving, safest option. I just want to be with someone who makes me feel safe, loved, understood, cared about. If I could feel that, have that, I would never consider a break up as an option.
Just exploring the why. Next has to be the why not, the how to stop, the how to break the pattern because it's damaging for me and for other people. I want stability. I want safety, even if that means I have to find a way to make lonely-alone not hurt so much and live with it.