My Shattering

Nine months ago when the man I loved for 3.5 years literally tossed me out of his house, finally fed up with my behavior, and ended our relationship I first felt the pain of Shattering. All I felt in those days and weeks following that end was pain. I ate, I slept, I worked and got up the next day and did the same. The entire time I was sad and angry, alone and embarrassed. I continued to long for him. I could hardly give up on the hope that he couldn't just walk away from our love, no matter what I had done or said. The truth is he could and he did. The truth is that I haven't completely but I'm dam close. My head knows and believes that he is finished with me but my heart holds out that in some far corner of his heart he, too, still feels the love.

That end was such a shatter that it tore open all my wounds. It was that experience that first marked my journey towards understanding myself and my wounds of abandonment. The woulds were there, happening again and again. I didn't know what they were and I didn't know why they were and I had no idea how to live this way.

While I was not abandoned in the sense that I was left on a doorstep...I know this is what I initially always thought was abandonment...my issues with abandonment began long ago. They have become real to me many times. There is an old family movie of myself, my siblings, my parents and my aunts and uncles. At first viewing it was heart warming to see my mother and the many relatives that have long departed from our lives. It was initially funny to see my brothers and sisters in our late fifties and early sixties garb. The movie has no sound and it is black and white. The more I see this movie, the sader it is for me. It is in that early movie that I see this little girl who I want to hug and hold. She doesn't sit still. She is up and down and acting up and out to gain the attention of at least one adult in that room. Finally a gift bow stuck on top of my head gets an "Oh {my name}" from my aunt. While you can't hear it you can see it on her lips. The movie makes me cry.

I came from a large family with many siblings. My father was an alcoholic. My mother spent many of her years as my mother also battling cancer to stay alive. There are things I want to say happened and things I want to say I remember, but I don't. I don't remember my parents reading to me, hugging me, holding me or saying I love you. And this is where my pain begins. My parents were fighting their own battles and trying to care for a lot of people and somehow those things that I longed for and needed, I didn't get.

I love my parents and I miss them. It's hard to look realistically at how I was raised and to note this pain. Perhaps I'm not getting it all right but the general feelings are there and I have no doubt of their existence.

So from that little girl fighting for attention to that little girl at 50 who got put out, I have had years and years of struggling to know how to be in relationships, struggling to know how to trust.