Emotionally unavailable. Unpredictable. Providing food.
Providing entertaining and fun activities. Evening caresses and snuggling and
comfort. I draw towards and desire some, and withdraw from (hurt – confused –
angry) some. The pattern repeats. Repeats. Repeats from childhood to now. At
the end of my childhood I coped by drinking alcohol daily and then leaving,
with a backpack of essentials, out into the world where I was promptly raped
and then involved in the same pattern of abuse, neglect, and nurture all mixed
up in a Dysfunctional Salad. Here it is again.
I can see that the extreme disconnect Luke has between his
intellectual knowledge and his emotions/behaviors is a result most likely of
all the feelings stirred up by my father’s death. He cared about my father. He
cares about me. But all the care in the world cannot cover up the pain he must
have felt as a 6 year old, abandoned by
his daddy, and thrust into years of Dysfunctional Salad where nothing was ever
talked about……where disconnect was the coping strategy. And then, when he was
in his early 20’s, his mother died a painful death from cancer and the family
coped by withdrawing from each other and themselves. In the 24 years we have lived
together he has spoken of her death twice. He has spoken of her maybe a handful
of times. He never speaks of his daddy.
I was hurt by his rage toward me at my father’s funeral. I
withdrew and disconnected myself. I spiraled into my own madness, my own
disconnect, and began to feel everything as if magnified x1,000,000,000. I
knocked on his Man Cave door and sometimes he came out to talk, sometimes he
came out to scream at me, and sometimes he simply never heard the knock. I
asked if he would come out twice a day, for 15 minutes and he agreed. It didn’t
happen. I asked if he would see a therapist (for both my own personal gain and
out of fear and love for him). It didn’t happen. He keeps asking me what he can
do for me, and if I request something he says he will do it, but doesn’t. He
cries. He is shut down. He is unaware that his behavior is erratic and it
hurts, omg it hurts.
I cried for hours two nights ago, only because he is so
withdrawn from me I am lost and on my own and afraid to navigate this “episode.”
I cried because I don’t want him to come into my bed at night and caress and
snuggle with me, yet I do want him to come into my bed at night and caress and
snuggle with me. It is the only love I can feel and it hurts and comforts me
both. I am incapable of telling him not to come into my bed. Incapable because
I don’t want to hurt him, incapable because I cannot resolve the push and pull
of my own desires.
I am not angry
with him because he can’t meet my needs in this turbulent and vulnerable time.
I am angry with him because he won’t do anything about it. I am afraid of his
denial. I am angry with myself because when he says “I will take care of you” I
believe him and then am crushed so mightily when he doesn’t. I am afraid I can’t
do this by myself. I want to leave him because I am afraid that he has tipped
the balance too far for me to recover except by myself. I am afraid to leave
him because that is what he is most afraid of, abandonment, and I do not want
to damage him anymore. I love the caresses and I hate that he is caressing me.
I am afraid I will kill myself. I am sad that he is not with me, even when he
is next to me. I miss him.
