Relationships are terrifying
...Of all sorts. It’s not just the romantic relationships that cripple my heart into a paper ball. If anything, I can handle those. Relationships with those people who are supposedly going to care for us no matter what we do. It feels like a stretch even writing that. However, that’s what unconditional love is, right?
We are told that we are loved. We are told by our friends, family, and complete strangers who think that they know us, that we are loved. Loved for our appearance, humour, listening skills, drinking skills, driving abilities, the money in our wallet. You get where I’m going with this. What if everything we had fell away, and all we were left with was literally just who we are. Who would love us? Who would YOU love? If all they had to offer you was all that they are, all that they have endured in this life, and the environment and experiences that shaped them.
I’ve lost so many people that claimed they loved me. I know the depths of heartbreak that I truly don’t think any person should feel.
Our parents. Inherently, from birth, we are hard wired to trust them. We know they will love us no matter what we do and we will love them just the same. Unfortunately, this hasn’t been my story.
I watched my mother battle bipolar disorder, ultimately until the end of our relationship. High swings of mania, and the lowest swings of depression. Ultimately, I couldn’t do it anymore. Removing myself from my mother has been the top 2 most painful things I have experienced to this day. I feel as though I grieve her death every single day. Knowing she is out there in the world, alive, unwell, and unable to help herself, but not speaking to her or feeling her embrace.
My father was no better, but the story with him and I scares me to share. Any time I share micro-truths about him, somehow it finds its way to him, and backfires onto me. I am so scared of him. I don’t understand how I can fear someone this much, but miss their presence equally. I guess that truly is unconditional love.
It was easy for him to let me go, I think. The last I spoke to my father was around August 2020. I called him while having a severe anxiety attack. I was afraid, and although I hadn’t spoke to him in ages, without thinking, I dialed him. In my frantic and illogical state, I said “please, I will do anything, counseling, I just need you right now, I want to die...” He responded “you made your bed, now you have to lay in it.”
He was referring to an act of exposure I pulled a couple of years back. I shared unflattering truths about my dad, because I was asked by someone who my dad is close with. I didn’t volunteer the information and I certainly did not want to deface anyone. I was honest about my dads abusive and manipulative past. To make a very long story short, my father told me that unless I told everyone that I lied about what I said, and I had made it all up, we wouldn’t have a relationship. The truth is, I would be lying if I said I had made it all up. It was all true. Nobody wants that to be true. Not a single person feels pride when they admit they have been a victim of abuse, at least, not me. It makes me feel weak and pathetic. As if I didn’t have the strength to stop it. (Side note: I never used the word “abuse” until one day a therapist told me the only way I could heal from the trauma and move past it, would be to admit that I was abused. So, now I use that shameful word). So, because of all of this, at my moment of feeling suicidal, my dad told me to lay in the bed I had made. He truly believed that he had done no wrong, and the feelings I had were from an accumulation of a life filled with lies and deceit. He projected his reality onto me.
In that moment, it dawned on me that what I was experiencing was love with conditions. A contract, per-say. It shattered my heart into a million little pieces. I felt unworthy and like my existence on this earth was meaningless. What purpose do I have if both of my parents and I have no relationship? I have been thrown to the world to figure this all out by myself. Without guidance. I am alone. I have no pack. I feel like the two people that are supposed to be there no matter what, aren’t. It’s scary. In fact, it’s terrifying.
I will never forget that day. Something switched “off” in me, and I am really struggling to find the switch to turn it back “on”. It was like my brain sent a message to my heart. The message was: “no matter how much someone tells you they love you or they like you, if you do something that doesn’t benefit them, they will drop you.” It’s left me scared. Emotionally losing my father has been the other top 2 experiences that has been the most painful.
Will my friends drop me if I have done something that they don’t agree with? Could my boyfriend choose to leave if he no longer gained from me? Would his family discontinue to like me (assuming they do) if I said something too opinionated. Does my family truly love me? Or do they love themselves and whatever they do to/for me is still beneficial to their livelihood and that’s why they do it.
Relationships are terrifying to me, because I feel like they are volatile. Love has evolved, but not for the stronger. Evolution has allowed for so many different variations of love, many of which I don’t understand. All of which, terrify me, because I don’t want to lose another person that I love. I want to hear someone tell me that they love me and that be the end of it. I don’t want to lay down on broken glass and let them walk all over me, just to continuously receive that love.
I know relationships of all sorts take work. I know that to be loved you have to give love. I am learning the balance. I am trying to love good people so that I can receive pure love in return. The process in finding that has been really painful.
My hope is to one day have grown past all of this and only be left with those true people who know me, in all of my forms, the good, the bad, and the ugly, and choose to stay.
