Separation Anxiety

More good things today, but I still can’t quite get them in the same box as my abandonment anxiety. M had a great first step in finding the sort of assistance you were seeking and prompt progress toward step 2, even though you did have to put up with a fair amount of bullshit to get there. I got a bed frame and a number of smaller items that help me feel more like I live here, and worked toward many of the longer-term goals that we had been putting off. Accomplished real grocery shopping, ate real supper, got to rub my toes in a fluffy rug. Shared about my daily life, helped people be awake and fed, ensured ongoing access to transportation, even chatted with Eggsy for a minute like a real human.

And also given any consecutive 16 minutes to myself I more or less panicked about a whole set of things that slotted into my abandonment issues.

As I yelled about when I first got here, and discussed more calmly several times since, this whole experience triggers the feelings I have about protecting people by running way. Reducing my need to be sure that I don’t leak on everyone around me and ruin their lives with my own shit. Reducing the harm I do by finding a way to have less direct impact. It’s one of the things I’ve been healing about since getting here, but it’s still a big factor in my state of mind. It’s still easy for me to imagine that I should just give up all the things I left in Seattle instead of missing them. That people (and dogs) there would be better off if I did, and don’t want me back anyway. It’s particularly easy when my mood is already poor, because I know how to stop missing people — all I have to do is cut off another piece of my soul. It hurts, but it works, and after a while you hardly even notice it’s happening.

And I’m having the same feels in the other direction, as I prepare for a week back in Seattle. That I’ll have to learn not to miss all the great parts of being here. That once the people here get enough space to breathe they’ll finally see how things would be better without me and not take me back, or at least not want me even if they’ll have me. That I won’t have anything left in Seattle when I get there*. None of these feelings are based on any sensible observation of current facts, but my experience has trained my brain for this sort of fear and I don’t always know how to make it stop. It’s definitely a thing I need other people to help me do correctly.

One reason it feels out of control is because Pete has reached around all my existing technical blocks to attempt to directly contact me. Earlier this year I added him to the list of people that can only reach me through Shanda, so that I don’t even have to know about contact attempts unless she notices and cares and decides I should. But because I asked him for money now he’s back on with tech support requests and asking me to intermediate between him and Ben in their own abusive relationship. “I’ve talked to you more in the last week than the last few years” — no shit asshole. Take the hint. And for the first time in my life I told him not only that his capitalism was hurting not help, but also specifically that he neglected his children due to his own lack of interpersonal skills and general disinterest. Which won’t do anything to change him other than maybe make him stop talking at me for a while. I have also revoked his comms access to help make that pause more permanent. While it’s probably useful for me to stop indulging his fantasy of being a good parent (as if such things exist inside a system as terrible as nuclear families) I’m pretty sure management through avoidance is the correct strategy here, just as it is for household violence and tuberculosis. I’ll calm back down about this bit like I have before but it’s sure not the best week for it.

There are probably other things. I did a bunch of stuff in the past few days. But yesterday my brain was all this. I’m sure today I can get back to being anxious about something else.

ZiB

*Other than my attachment issues, obviously. That’s one piece of baggage air travel will never deprive me of.