PART 1 (nearly 2 years ago)
am i capable of love, no matter its form? friendships, family, relationships... am i capable of giving them my all and sticking with them no matter what? are they capable? i understand that i have the ability to stay based on my savior complex. though i realize in retrospect that in itself is not love. if james relapses i will want to fix him. put myself on a pedestal because i performed a miracle and managed convince him he needs me more than drugs. because i really wish he did.
i actually did love him. im ashamed to admit it, but i would have done anything for him. and i did. money, food, a home, myself- everything that i had. but i lost it all in the process.
but the reason i ask such a question is because there is a number of people in my life who i believe i should hold some level of love for, but despite my efforts i can not. i love them in the sense that i know i am supposed to, yet i seem to shrink further away from them at every conversation. i guess sometimes i do feel appreciative of them, but only sometimes. my humor is often witty and insensitive, usually only meant ironically and not from a place where i actually believe the things i say. but sometimes i cant help but think that i do mean them. this feeling is becoming increasingly so.
james and i have many differences in values and interests- hes an extreme extrovert with adhd whos fundamental needs are stimulation and social interaction. my personality could not possibly be more opposite from someone. i have crushing social anxiety (an already impenetrable obstacle in my everyday life). i masked my delusion and paranoia and panic attacks from my mere presence in public so as to not upset him. at least, this is how i would feel with someone else. how distinct and opposite characteristics melded so well together. i grounded him, and he set my mind free.
or is our perfect oppositions just something i just tell myself we have in moments of crisis, because i can not handle him seeing the bad in me? maybe we were only perfectly balanced because we were both hiding things. i have to be objectively perfect in every way. he does not see me eat. he does not see me brush my teeth. he does not see me cry. he does not see me be a human being. but then eventually he did, and he still loved me. just as i eventually saw him, and i still loved him.
but it turns out that it is impossible to love someone like me. even if someone had the desire to deal with my emotions, everyone has a breaking point. and i guarantee i could snap him right in half if i was my true self. i have so much control over him. no one ever let me have power. no one ever let me win arguments. for almost 19 years my voice has been shoved into a 12-foot grave. my appetite to shove another man into that same grave is rooted into my very existence. not with him, though. he lets me speak, he lets me have opinions and get excited. we have differences in value and opinion and we argue, no relationship is perfect. but at this point i just assume that there is no man who understands the mind of a woman, nor one that holds the same beliefs as one.
but my deep-seated eagerness for revenge on the life i have lived thus far is a large portion of my avoidant attachment style. naturally, i can not form a close attachment to someone when the only thing tying us together is a malicious string. the other contributing pieces include a much more selfish and depressing approach.
growing in an environment where one receives very minimal response to negative emotions can manifest itself in a multitude of ways. personally. the only replies to my distress consisted of my father reprimanding me with an inch-thick piece of plywood slapped against my nearly bare ass. or my mother telling me that dying happy is impossible anyway, so there is no point in doing things that will make you happy.
"fine. i guess ill just stop being your dad"
"you do not have the rights to privacy or your own opinion because you are a child"
