Do you ever feel like for every one step forward you take, you end up taking two steps backward? That's how I feel right now. It's like everything is within my reach and I have the tools available to succeed... but I am choosing to escape. Opposed to rationalization, escaping for me is just blocking out EVERYTHING. I get caught up in a series on Netflix, a game on my phone, working late, really whatever task that demands my attention, allowing me to get away from thinking about anything going on in my life.
What am I working so hard to block out? Emotions are the obvious answer; but what ones? I have this reoccurinig feeling of loneliness. Not just a constant feeling of loneliness, a fear of eternal loneliness.
What if I never find a partner to share my life with? It's gotten to the point where I lay in bed at night, wondering if I'll ever be held again... loved again.
But where does it stem from? Logic (aka kryptonite) tells me someone is out there for me. I can safely say that I know that, but I still fear feeling this loneliness for the rest of my life. I can't really be scared of this... but I am. That's what I know.
So I am challenged with this question... when else in my life have I felt lonely?
My first thought, every day of my life? Haha...but no, seriously. I felt lonely when I was a small child, no bigger than two feet tall when I wondered where my "father" was. Later in life, I learned to refer to this individual a sperm donor, but as a five-year-old child, I just wondered why all the other kids had dads, and I didn't.
I thought I was over the daddy issues. I don't have any desire to meet the man that I refer to as a sperm donor. I have a dad who adopted me at the age of 7. Unlike most "fathers," he made the choice to be my dad and that means more to me. Without him and his family, I wouldn't be where I am at now. I can safely say, that memory doesn't haunt me anymore.
Maybe it's not the memory though, maybe it's the theme of loneliness throughout my childhood that haunts me.
I was always alone. My mom worked and I was in daycare by myself or she wanted to go visit her boyfriend (the man who later adopted me) and I was entertaining myself away from everything I knew. I moved from Colorado to Michigan when I was 7 and left the world I knew behind. Acted out in second grade, when the first person noticed I was not handling my life well. So my parents put me in counseling. The thing is though, no one ever told me it was OK or that it was going to be ok. I was just told to get it together and be positive. I honestly don't know if anyone ever asked if I was ok?
I don't think I learned what it is was to not be ok, until I was a senior in high school. Not being ok, wasn't an option. The goal was to be positive and grateful. The theme was to ignore my feelings, not embrace them. Not acknowledge them. I needed to control, I was supposed to be able to control them. That's when I first started escaping. I would get lost in books until I couldn't differentiate between the stories and real life. I felt my emotions through the characters and just dealt with the rest of my life.
I am not sure this posting will be helpful to anyone...or if it even makes sense. I could sit here and say the lesson I learned in life was to make the best and give the "when life gives you lemons" speech. But that's not always what is best. Sometimes you just have to feel, whatever that feeling is. We often avoid the "bad" feelings, but you can't pick and choose what to avoid. We feel everything or nothing. For me, it's been nothing for far too long.
Whether it's through logic or escaping, I find a way to avoid feeling. This is how I have hurt myself most in life. I hope I can forgive myself.
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