Rubber Bands and Chewing Gum

It’s been one hell of a year – and honestly the level of grief I have been dealing with (navigating my way through the dark!) has been huge and it’s intense at the moment with all the anniversary stuff happening now. It’s bad enough that Anita and I have ‘ended but not’ on such a weird footing but what’s made it all the more difficult is what this ‘end’ (abandonment) has tapped into.

The work Anita and I were doing in my therapy was so much about trying to make sense of and, hopefully, healing the mother wound and the physical and emotional abandonments from the past that have so massively impacted me.

It might seem hyperbolic but this deep wounding that happened so young and continued on as I grew up has formed so much of the fabric of how I see myself and how I operate in my life. I guess most of you that follow this blog probably relate to that in some way.

The anxiety, the hypervigilance, the never feeling ‘good enough’ whilst simultaneously feeling ‘too much’, trying to prove my worthiness through productivity, trying not to have any kind of need… the list goes on and on…really stems from the relationship with my mother. It’s not a secret to me or to anyone else here!

Sadly, my efforts at working through this mess with therapists has not gone brilliantly despite my best efforts. What happened with Em was completely devastating – I don’t think I’ll ever really get over being compared to a ‘tick’! But what has happened with Anita is soooo much worse. To be left in the way I have by someone who professed to love me deeply has triggered so much grief and pain.

I’ve lost Anita who was so much to me for so long seemingly for something that wasn’t even my fault but even knowing this, it doesn’t change anything – she still left me. I wasn’t ‘enough’ for her to stay. And that’s the kicker in relationships – even when we get our side more or less right, we can’t account for the other. And I do get it, Anita’s life got messy… very… but she is working…and this is the thing I can’t make right in my mind.

So despite there having been no rupture, no lack of love (ha- really?!), nothing actually wrong with me (apparently) I am still having to stare down this loss, as well as all the other hurts that have filled this well over the course of my life because Anita chose to leave me when she did. The work wasn’t done and so rather than feel healed I just feel additionally wounded. It’s another loss to work through on top of so many other losses.

I remember early on speaking with Anita about therapy and saying how obviously the goal is to leave one day but actually how important it feels to have a sort of open door policy. There’s a supportive relationship that we would build and could always be returned to at intervals if needed. There would be a period of intense need, dependency etc but the goal of the work was to basically let my young parts integrate, experience what it is to be held, to have some of their needs met and eventually the maturational process would take place and I would naturally individuate and need A less.

Like that’s the idea.

That was our plan.

A kind of gentle reparenting.

Only premature termination of this work didn’t help that at all. All it’s done is reinforce the original message that no one is safe and I am not worthy of love or care…or at least some parts feel that.

My adult self is stronger than it has ever been and is more able than it has ever been to communicate with those on the minibus inside and hold them to a degree. I was well on the way to the end point – but my god it’s painful being here right now.

Of course, I now see Elle, and as I have said, I really like her a lot. I can feel the attachment to her building and honestly it scares the fucking shit out of me. The push/pull inside is agony at times. I am so tired of having to hold all this and really desperately want to just collapse in a heap on the floor of the therapy room and remove all the armour and masks…I am getting there…

Anyway, one of the things I have been doing more recently is spending time at the beach walking on my own and just feeling into the feelings.

Yikes.

The feelings are big.

I cry a lot.

It doesn’t matter, the beach has been pretty much abandoned and I often go out early morning or towards sunset so no one sees me with tears streaming down my face.

One of the things I do is collect pebbles and interesting shells. I have always drawn hearts in the sand but lately I have been making hearts from beach material. It’s so cathartic wandering up and down the sand seeking out whatever colour or type of rock or shell I am looking for and spending some time creating something really simple but so meaningful to me.

It feels like an act of grief and act of love.

There has been nowhere for my grief to go this year with Anita. I’ve held it tightly inside – because actually all it is is love. So much of it. And so I make these hearts. Sometimes they’re for A. Sometimes for Em. Sometimes more hopefully, for Elle and a bridge to connection with her.

Here’s some for you to see:

Be gentle with your vulnerable hearts xx