What is Love?

 

I had spent my life changing myself for a guy, so it makes sense that it was not good enough for me when he said “I love you as you are”. To him, I was enough.. yet I didn’t believe I was. I just saw everything that was wrong with him because it didn’t fit my conditioned image of what an ideal partner should be, and I saw everything wrong with me. I thought he would like someone else better and I was mad at myself for not being that ideal image for him. But what I imagined his “ideal match” to be, was not what he imagined it to be. I lacked a sense of self, where he knew who he was. I silently resented him because he had achieved what I had not- a true identity and connection to one’s higher self. I admired his discipline to keep his life harmonious, and his ability to attract light. I darkened his light. I could not let him be who he was.

The cycle had ended. I had learnt the lesson. The lesson that life has tried so earnestly to teach me, over and over again. When I was finally old enough to have a mutual crush (thirteen), I had developed a bizarre ideation of what love was. It led to a twisted tale of “love at first sight” where girl meets boy, girl obsesses over boy, and girl holds on until she decided to let go. I had ensnared my first man… well he was just a teenager. 

The fact that I do not feel or express love in a way that is normal or socially healthy has left my life scattered in constant suffering and heartache. The detachment I felt from my family and close friends left me generally un- likable. I was the center of my own show. I could not comprehend that those around me were having a conscious experience different than mine. I lashed out frequently when my own experience did not ebb to my control. I thought I knew what being in love was, and before I continue I must have you [reader] know that I was without guile; unless I wasn’t. The ever-changing door of personality traits confused those around me. It started to present itself around 10 years old. I cannot say with certainty what I was like before then. I remember a lot of my childhood, but could not say what the state of my mental health was. From what my mother tells me I was very quiet and independent from the ages of 5-10. In these formative years I had experienced complex childhood trauma, mostly surrounding a mother wound. My little sister was born the year I turned five. Not only was I no longer the star of the show, my mothers chronic illness took hold and her health dove dramatically. Her physical appearance began to morph into what I would call a fragile state, but the only way I know my mother. I have no memory of what she was like before she was sick. The only kind of mother I have known, was chronically ill and dying. I did not hug, play with, or hold hands with my own mother. My father is a resilient type, with an interesting story of his own. 

Side note: each member of my family have had quite dramatic experiences. We are so different but there is a link, that we are here to bring something to this world. I could have spent my life getting to know these fabulously diverse group of people, but instead I hid. My dad sat the kids down at the kitchen table one night in Elizabeth, Colorado and told us that our mother was very ill. In that moment we prepared in our hearts, that our mother was dying. As a child of a gentle and stoic man, I learnt to go about my life with small hold on my familial attachment. From that day forward I felt emotionally abandoned. I must have thought in my subconscious that if I did not get close enough to her, I would not be severely damaged when she would eventually pass. That fear created, from that day, a new web of neural networking that would, in due course, lead to my mental demise. Until I release the hold this trauma has on my system, I will never be free from my pain or learn how to love. 

Was I her angel? From my own heartbreaking experience of losing close friendships in a continuous cycle, what were these angels here to teach me; and why didn’t I listen. The dissociation with my sense of self, had latched itself onto the ideal of controlled fantasy. Created from early childhood trauma, an alter-ego appeared announcing itself as the center of the universe; it was me against the world. 

Some of my earliest memories include my 5 year old birthday party where I displayed selfish bullying tendencies. I do not have a physical memory of holding my mothers hand, ever. If I had seen it even in a picture, the pain encompassing my maternal relationships - let alone my three sisters - was hidden deep down underneath a facade. 

At least this is one side of my memory that has had the biggest impact. I’ve fixated on it. Between the ages of 5-9 I had the tendency to hide, lie, steal, all in the name of fear. Fear of tornados. Fear of disasters. My anxiety was deeply rooted in the foundational belief that my mother was dying. The physical bond created in the womb was broken, and left me raw. I was reactive, irritable, tired. I had friends in elementary school with whom I enjoyed playing and imagining with. Their families became a refuge, and I dreamt of living as them; someone else with a different family. 

That chapter of my life will stay behind closed doors for now. It will do me no more good to hold onto that attachment, I have to let it go. But that’s one tricky thing about childhood trauma: it can literally fuck you up for the rest of your life.