Why can't we get all the people together in the world that we really like and then just stay together? I guess that wouldn't work. Someone would leave. Someone always leaves. Then we would have to say goodbye. I hate goodbyes. I know what I need. I need more hellos.
---Snoopy
Apparently, abandonment the first fear that each of us experience as an infant. As such, it is the primal fear. I am reading into it...
"The abandonment wound deepens with each new experience - a loss, a disconnection or a disappointment."
Geneva, the city of diplomacy. Friends would come and go every four years. Summers in Libya. Family would rotate, new cousins discovered, old ones lost, family fights, people disappearing in and out. No consistency, except for the house. The youngest of five, they all left the house.. one by one.. until I was 17 and I was alone at home.
"Abandonment is similar to other types of bereavement, but its grief is complicated by rejection and betrayal."
I have become overly self-sufficient. I tend to keep people at a distance and only let a select few get close. Even those few are either in different continents, far away, or we only see each other a few times a week at most. Distance is always there. I suppose it is comfortable. No one overly close. Not a strong possibility of disappointment or pain. It scares me sometimes.
Have you ever been in a crowd of 20 people you adore.. or received 30 phone calls in one day.. and still feel lonely? Worst still, have you ever come close to being loved, and pushed it away? Does it make sense that you would push something away that you quietly yearn for? And yet, you seem to have no control over it.. as though the self-defense mechanisms are operating on their own.. and you have absolutely no say in the matter.
Have I become the abandoner?
posted by Nura @ 9:12 PM
4 comments
4 Comments:
You're quite right.
The fear of abandonment is what lets us keep people at a distance which does give a comfortable feeling of self control at first, but then leads us to questioning ourselves of where we went wrong !
I've been always plagued with the sense of being left along in the middle of no where. One of my early childhood memories, is seeing myself standing in front of the gate of my first day at Kindergarten, I was wearing a white school gown with blue ribbons around my neck, I was crying without stop, I look to the street to see my mum riding her car and telling the old man guarding the gate (Bawab) to look after me, I was only four years old.
After 27 years I still feel a shiver just telling this memory.
Since then, when ever I find myself in a situation to start something new, a new job, a new school, that feeling of me looking to the gate trying to find something to hold me from falling, from crying, to find a familiar face, or maybe my mum, I stop for a minute, take a deep breath, rub my eyes, shake the fear, and say to myself, you will never grow.. Ghazi you will never grow..
Ghazi - why would you say that? The memory will always be there, it has become instinctual, but it is whether you will allow that to overtake your actions that determines whether you have learned and "grown". So I beg to differ - I think you have grown just by being able to identify that memory and explain the feelings attached to it. :) Thanks for sharing.
whoa! i discovered ur blog while takin to a friend bout fear and overcoming it. i immediately copied and pasted that Snoopy quote into the IM window.
abandonement and abandoning is a topic close to my heart cuz its practicaly my life's story! (i've lived on every continent 'cept Australia and Antartica!)
Post a Comment
<< Home