It is wonderful to read your story of feeling contradictory things, complimentary things, confusing things, and honest things. You talk about these things with such clarity and awareness, and the emotion is there and powerful. No matter how much thought goes into it, the emotion is there. Getting through these stories will take a while, and I may comment. But maybe I'll save questions for another good conversation.
But...
One of the things I find most profoundly affected me is the removal of all self-love and self-worth before I could even know what those were. There has never been anyone in the world I have hated as much as myself. Not just passively, but actively, angrily, and violently hated. Where was self-love supposed to rest? Where was it supposed to live?
This was because what happened to me happened before I could understand it. I was given something that made no sense, and so I came up with a schema for understanding it. "When I am bad I am punished. Punishment feels bad. This felt worse than anything I have felt so far. Therefore I must be worse than I have ever been." And so I learned that deep inside me, where the pain resided, was where the badness was. And it should be hidden, shunned, and removed if at all possible.
Very little has changed since then. And when you talk about using relationships to fill that void, it hit hard. I know I do this, but I have not been able to find value in myself or support through other relationships. I must be present for these relationships, and that is what makes me so vulnerable and so uncomfortable. Every time it feels like I'm jumping off a cliff because I am showing someone this infected and corrupted thing that is me.
But when I try to reconcile myself to a life without love, especially romantic love, I realize that expressing love in that way, in that type of relationship, is important to me. I once told a partner, "I love thoroughly. I don't leave anything out." It is true. I love well, and it is a gift to be able to do that. However there is always something missing because none of that love is for me.
I work on it, and it is slowly budging. Early days really. Maybe it'll work if I'm lucky.
Thank you for writing this, and thank you for reading my very tangential self-focused comment.
A-fucking-men!!
It is wonderful to read your story of feeling contradictory things, complimentary things, confusing things, and honest things. You talk about these things with such clarity and awareness, and the emotion is there and powerful. No matter how much thought goes into it, the emotion is there. Getting through these stories will take a while, and I may comment. But maybe I'll save questions for another good conversation.
But...
One of the things I find most profoundly affected me is the removal of all self-love and self-worth before I could even know what those were. There has never been anyone in the world I have hated as much as myself. Not just passively, but actively, angrily, and violently hated. Where was self-love supposed to rest? Where was it supposed to live?
This was because what happened to me happened before I could understand it. I was given something that made no sense, and so I came up with a schema for understanding it. "When I am bad I am punished. Punishment feels bad. This felt worse than anything I have felt so far. Therefore I must be worse than I have ever been." And so I learned that deep inside me, where the pain resided, was where the badness was. And it should be hidden, shunned, and removed if at all possible.
Very little has changed since then. And when you talk about using relationships to fill that void, it hit hard. I know I do this, but I have not been able to find value in myself or support through other relationships. I must be present for these relationships, and that is what makes me so vulnerable and so uncomfortable. Every time it feels like I'm jumping off a cliff because I am showing someone this infected and corrupted thing that is me.
But when I try to reconcile myself to a life without love, especially romantic love, I realize that expressing love in that way, in that type of relationship, is important to me. I once told a partner, "I love thoroughly. I don't leave anything out." It is true. I love well, and it is a gift to be able to do that. However there is always something missing because none of that love is for me.
I work on it, and it is slowly budging. Early days really. Maybe it'll work if I'm lucky.
Thank you for writing this, and thank you for reading my very tangential self-focused comment.