Mommy and Me

Well kids, I'm back among the living once again. Mama came, and then she went. That's the nice thing about visits, they come to an end. And yet it's sad, because here's the real deal, kids: I really love my mother. I love her so much! And we are quite alike, she and I. We both love good books, cozy little animals, good art, and safety. (Altho her definition of good art and my definition of good art are a wee bit different.) I enjoy talking to my mother and even enjoy hearing what she has to say (at least some of the time). But, aye, here's the rub: she has also hurt me, down to the very depths of my being, where I cannot even begin to fathom. And to hold that love, and yet that hate of her all in the same place, at the same time, is hard to do. It's espescially hard, considering Good Christian Girls aren't supposed to feel hatred in the first place, much less for their mothers! (And I hope I haven't offended anyone's sensibilities.) I want so badly to think and feel just one thing, to pick one, and go with it! I could hate her, oh so easily! I could say, "F- you," only say it aloud, instead of saying it silently in angry thoughts and gestures, as when I 'eat at' my mother (as tho eating a cookie can really communicate my anger to her). Or, I could take what seems now the easiest way of all, the way I'm used to, the way where I run towards her, and after her, and every which way, always yearning for her approval. Because msot days, I would do anything for it.
For some reason, on her visit, my mother decided to bring up When I Was Depressed In Seventh Grade. I'm not quite sure why this was so necessary, but apparently it was, and so we discussed that horrible time, opening many, Many cans of worms. I even revealed to her, for the first time, that even then, I wanted very much to die. She had thought I was only suicidal when I was older. And, of course, I cried, and, of course, she tried to comfort me, but as she and I sat there, her arms around my shoulders as I sat on the floor, sobbing, I realized that my dearest fantasy could never come true. For some years now, I have fantasized about crawling up into my mother's lap and just sobbing, completely accepted and completely loved. Well, that will never happen. Because, as much as part of me wants to fuse back into my mother, and simply become a little part of her, I can't do it. I'm not her, I'm me. And to 'fuse' with her means giving up myself, means acting like she never hurt me, and I Can't Do That. I just can't.
So instead, I'll try very hard to see and accept my mother just as she is, very flawed, but beautiful.
(P.S. No, I just could not bring myself to use 'fuck' in a sentence about my mother. It just seems so Wrong. So we'll go with 'f-you' instead. ;-))
(P.P.S. I know this is a lot of psychobabble crap. But bear with me. I needed to write this out for my own sake.)

We Who Are About to Die, Salute You

Well folks, tomorrow is M-Day, the day when Mama comes. And, oh lord, I should be flipping out, and part of me is very anxious indeed. However, there's another part of me, a small part, but a strong part that doesn't care, because, miracle of miracles, that part of me is Happy.
Yes, happy, I know you just about fell off your chair. I did too, and all day, I have hardly known what to do with myself. But, my understanding of myself and my mistakes with Boy, and all of my relationships, has given me this amazing sense of relief, and freedom, and Hope. And, good grascious, it's been a long time since we've seen much hope around here.
Today was a crazy day of even more 'clicking' in therapy. I explained all about The Revelation (see below) to Dr. Stacey, which was a crazy whirlwind, and then we took it even further. Why can I not light a scented candle, get my PhD, or date Boy? Well, dear readers, it is simply because I want to do those things. And somehow, deep inside of me, every time I want or need something, a voice inside of me, the voice of my mother, the voice of the 'Moral Monitor,' tells me that I Cannot have it, that because I want it, it must be Bad, and moreover, because I want it, I am Greedy, Selfish, Stupid, a Bad Christian, a Whore, etc., generally a piece of shit. Thus, everything I want, from a graduate education to cute panties, is inherently bad. If I let myself have it, I don't enjoy it, because the Mean Voices spoil it, telling me I"m a whore, etc. If I don't let myself have it, then I am deprived, my needs go unmet, and I run around, ever insatiable. This even fits in with my bingeing, because there I am desperately trying to fill myself, desperately trying to give myself what I need, only food isn't it. So, I go around, "Always hungry, but always full."
Now, kids, I realize that this may seem rather basic and obvious. Or it may seem like my excuse to go buy a Mercedes (because after all, I want it.) That is Not what this means. It simply means that I understand better why I ALWAYS FEEL GUILTY ABOUT EVERYTHING. (And I mean everything, people.)
And maybe, since I understand, maybe I can start on the road to change. Maybe I can someday get what I want, and let it fill my needs, as well. Maybe there is a little hope, a little reason to feel happy.
My heart tells me so, as I feel a little corner of it, a tiny part, opening up slowly to the sunlight, like a butterfly spreading it's wings for the first time.
Please oh please, Fly free!

A Revelation

So, these past couple of days have been my whirl-wind tour through the mysteries of my own attachment, or lack thereof, to the significant people in my life. This may get a wee bit technical, but I'll do my best to explain. Attachment theory simply deals with the infant's attachment to mother in the first two years of life, and posits that later relationships are seriously affected by these early infant/mother interactions. If your mother did not or was unable to care for your needs as a child, the idea is that later in life you will continue to seek after relationships to get those needs met in some way. In seeking this out, people's whose attachments didn't go so well the first time around tend to act in specific ways in their relationships because of past hurt or unmet needs.
So that's the general overview.
This all started yesterday when I was free-associating (ie., day-dreaming) in Dr. Porter's class. (Actually, all this started long before that, but this seems to me to be the best place to begin.) I was goign along, half-heartedly listening to the lecture, trying to stay awake, when I had this sudden fantasy of Dr. Porter taking me in his arms, holding me, and then taking me home to his wife and baby. (I know, this is really weird, bare with me.) Only, the thing of it was, it was Not Sexual. So, being the good little psychologist I am, I was like, what the hell is this about? (Psychologists must use swear words.) I mean, Dr. Porter's a nice guy and all, but why him and why that?
And then for the rest of the evening, it was this massive 'clicking' in my brain, with things all fitting together like crazy.
Why did I want to be held by Dr. Porter? Because I never felt emotionally held as a child. My mother was too depressed, too off in her own little world to handle my emotions; instead, I had to handle hers. From a very young age, I learned that my emotions were 'too much,' that one must not be sad or unhappy, because two people being that depressed was just too much to deal with. So, make sure everything's 'fine,' make sure it's ok, make sure you don't show too much of what's really going on! No one can really handle you, you're too much. So, please hold me, Dr. Porter, please be able to contain me, don't let me be too much for you!
Oh!, but there's more!
Why must it be a man to hold me? Because women are fundamentally unsafe. First, my mother was too fragile to deal with me, and thus when I was sad or angry around her, things quickly became much too frightening for me to handle, because she freaked out and I had to parent her and make her feel better. However, even more importantly, I was molested by a woman, and thus touch from women frightens me to the core, and my whole being screams, "Get away!" That's why it takes me Years to be comfortable with a friend giving me a hug. Add to all this mix that my father was completely unavailable to me when I was little, and you have some crazy emotional crap!
So where does Boy enter into all of this? Oh so easily.
When I found you, you were my first 'secure attachment,' the first person who ever came even remotely close to meeting all these unmet needs, screaming from inside me. The problem of it is, that once your safety and grace overcame my barriers, my needs came out like a flood which no one, or at least no person, could ever fill. I was (and am) insatiable, looking desperately again and again and again for unconditional love, acceptance, and delight. You delighted in me in a way my mother never had. And I ate it up. And I wanted more. The problem being that you couldn't give me more, because it wasn't yours to give.
And then I became bonded to you out of fear. I was desperate to keep you, so desperately afraid of rejection and abandonment. And I began to use you as well. Oooooh, I am very ashamed of that, but it's true. I couldn't make myself feel happy, so I used you as my upper, fishing for compliments, fishing for kisses. I am so sorry. I hope you can forgive me. I was so desperate, and I sucked the life out of you, sucked every bit of love and affection I could find. But my needs don't make it right.
I could never understand why I was so jealous of every girl you talked to, and why it made me so angry when you went out with your friends. Oh!, I was so bitchy in my heart! I mean, a boy needs some friends, after all! But, oh!, I felt so hurt and rejected by it because I wanted All Of You. Just the parts you should and could give me were never enough, because I was asking you to be all the love and affection and joy I had missed.
And then I worried, because I realized you couldn't meet my every need, and so I thought, oh no!, something's wrong, because I didn't realize I was trying to make you meet needs that weren't yours to fill. And so my desperate fear that I would loose you grew and grew. So I held on harder, held on more desperately, and hid many parts of myself, because I so much feared that if you saw them, you would reject me. And so in spite of my desperate desire to be close to you, I pushed you away as well because it was too frightening to have you near. (As one of my articles says, "The closer we get, the scarier it gets, so I have to avoid the closeness or the father away we get, the scarier it gets, so I have to manipulate closeness.") Push and pull, back and forth, close and near. I cant' stand to loose you, but I can't stand to have you close.
And for heaven's sake, I definitely couldn't be myself, because you'd surely reject me then.
So, things got scarier and scarier, and I needed you more, and pushed you away more, and then a scary monster reared it's ugly head: Commitment. Was I going to marry you, or not? And while the thought of losing you terrified me, the thought of getting closer terrified me more, because our relationship wasn't 'perfect,' and for heaven's sake, you weren't meeting all my needs!, all those needs that weren't yours to meet anyway. And so, finally, in a last act of desperation, I rejected you, to beat you to the punch, so that you couldn't out-and-out reject me. I did the rejecting for you.
And that, my friends, is why all that mother/infant bonding crap is so important.
And that is why you shouldn't try to get a boyfriend to meet every attachment need you've ever had in your life.
And that is why I am very sorry for how I hurt you.

A Visit

When your mother announces she's coming to visit you two weeks before she arrives, you tend to do crazy things. Like plan the right outfits, pray your pimples go away, and purge your vocabulary of "Holy Crap!" and other unacceptable phrases. And clean out your car. Which is what I did today.
Now, this may not sound like that big of a project, but you must understand that I haven't really cleaned out my car at all since I got it a year and a half ago. And I haven't removed excess paperwork/crap since basically last spring, or at least last August. So, ummm, there was a lot of stuff. And a lot of grime (L.A. SMOG, people - the dashboard was coated with this disgusting black layer) and a lot of coffee stains. So I got the vacuum cleaner and hooked up the attachments and vacuumed the whole dadgum thing, and scrubbed with the carpet cleaner, and used Windex, and . . . went through all the Stuff. Old tupperware (ewww), empty waterbottles, and paperwork galore. Receipts from my old therapist, confidentiality documents from my new therapist, maps of the Grand Canyon, maps of LA, worksheets, notices from school, wedding catalogs, you name it, it was there. (The kitchen sink was happily absent.)
The little compartment over the radio, where the tape player would go, if I had one, was espescially full. Full of stuff, and full of memories. There was a receipt from Steak and Shake in Texas, two shakes and one order of fries - we often went there late at night. A receipt from a Smoothie King in Picayune, Mississippi for a mocha - you always put up with my coffee cravings so patiently, giving into my whims and driving us all over to find me a Starbucks! And the little 'growing dinosaurs', the little capsules that when you put them in water, it grows into a sponge in the shape of some wild animal. Remember how we used to bring those home from the grocery store and pop them in warm water, waiting to see what they were? Some special fortunes from special fortune cookies, from a special night. Do you remember your fortune, baby? Do you remember that night? You always had such funny rules about opening fortune cookies! And, in the backseat, a grocery list. Which seems so simple, but I nearly started crying. We went to the grocery store together, every week. I loved so much to shop with you, even something so mundane was fun with you. We went up and down the aisles together, you hiding from me, or telling jokes, or stealing a kiss - in the middle of the freaking grocery store. ;-) I miss that simple weekly ritual, I miss the joking smile, I miss you and I love you.
Just in case either of us had forgotten.