My depression is holding steady still good that I am not jumping down the rabbit hole that I have been down so many times. This is probably due to me getting the right meds and actually taking them. Yet I am fighting my demon, my emotional wall.
I tend to force my wall up when I feel fragile or vulnerable. I hate it because I will keep people at a distance and I have been working hard to not due this and have made some strides. Still my mind tells me that I am better off protected. The problem is that I do not want to be alone, I hate it. I try and tell myself that I can have my walls up and still not be alone, I will just go back to surface relationships with people other than the ones I emotionally trust. See I have major abandonment issues.
My abandonment issues started with the sexual abuse that my uncle victimized me with. For year I did not stand up for myself and once I did, half of my family chose sides and sided with my Uncle rather than crazy Steven. I grew up with half a family, crappy holidays, less of a family support system because of me defending myself. My next sense of abandonment came with my discovering that I was adopted. I was a teen, dealing with the usual teen search for a sense of self identity and poof, all I thought of who I was, was gone. I was soon losing friends as my Bipolar Disorder became apparent, more real and imagined abandonment,
I did ok for awhile til my wife got sick and died. She was the first person in my adult life to accept me for what and who I was, did not judge me and loved me until the end. After she was gone I learned that her side of the family left me as well. I was just beginning to love the holidays and now they were gone. I learned to build my walls keeping all but a few people completly out. and letting them in only as close as my heart could be comfortable in.
This fear of abandonment has done me no good, it has caused me to loose more people who cared for me than I at most times willing to admit. I have left a path of emotional damage behind me. Ironically my fear of hurting others with my fucked up issues has also played a huge part in my wall building.
Now days I do not want to live this way, I want a full life with the amazing people in my life, but I fear that I cannnot heal, cannot learn to be a friend. I sleep with my fear and depression wondering if I am too broken for anyone who already has a life to want to stick around.
I am working to not be this, working to be a better person who is not controlled by his fears and abandonment both real and imagined. I hope by writing about this both me and others will great understand who I am.
I love my friends they are the only family I have left. I am just not sure that I show it enough or at all.
Just a comment on something you said about your wife's family: that is terribly sad that they left you hanging. We've had several deaths in our immediate family but for about ten years after my uncle died, his partner still spent summer vacations with my family like they used to as a couple. He's since moved on and has a new love, and they do their own thing, but it was in his own time and way. It's hard enough to lose a loved one, but losing a family at the same time is even worse. I can understand that they were also grieving and no blame anywhere. It's just sad nonetheless.
ReplyDeleteFor me it was rough, it kind of validated to me in a odd way that I will always be a outsider at the will of others and That I have little choice of who is family in my life.
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