Hubby is away, and if there is one thing I know, its that I shouldn’t be left alone. It leaves me feeling a bit lost, and adrift. And introspective. Sometimes a bit of naval gazing is good, but I do tend to overthink, and make myself sad in the process.
When my father died, I remember trying to explain my grief to a friend. My grief wasn’t the grief of losing a father, losing someone I loved, because I didn’t love him. You just don’t grieve for someone who subjected you to emotional abuse as a child, who treated you as a weapon in a constant war, as a prize to be claimed. Who never valued you as a person, criticised you for who you were, and were quick to blame you for their own mistakes and choices. Whose love was conditional, and who threw you away, when you got “too hard”. What you grieve for, is the dream; the made up daddy, who told you how proud he was of you, how beautiful he thought you were, who made you feel valued, and cherished. That is the man I grieved for, all in my head.
But, the consequences of my childhood has had echos into my adult life, and impact on my life as an adult. Of course my emotional makeup, and in particular the learned responses to conflict, mean that I am a bundle of anxiety at the best of times. When an issue comes up in my relationships; in my marriage or at work; I find myself just shutting down, without any tools to assert my point, or work towards a resolution. I struggle to articulate what I want, and then feel tremendous frustration when I don’t get it, followed by guilt for even wanting anything for myself, and then anger at feeling guilty. And here we go round the mulberry bush.  I hold people at arms length, because getting close means opening myself up to the possibility of being hurt. And when someone hurts me, the emotional pain is crushing. Most of the time, its just easier to close myself off.
But …… its lonely.
All my life I have wished for a best friend. Of course I have my sister, and my relationship with her is something I value beyond belief. But it is an uneven relationship; I am older, we are at different stages in our lives, and our different (but equally damaging) upbringings, mean that we both isolate ourselves emotionally.
What I think I want, is someone who gets me, who is on my wavelength, who genuinely cares for me.
Don’t get me wrong, I have a great bunch of friends, who are lovely, and who share similar interests. But lovely as they are, none have that connection that I wish for. A “bestie”, or at least what I imagine a bestie relationship would be. And as I get older, I think more and more, that this lack in my life, is a situation of my own making. My own anxieties and hurts, are what holds me back, from forming a deeper connection.
And so I grieve for this dream of a friendship. And its lonely.
