(or perhaps this is better titled “The Root of Limerence”)
Ok first, that’s a lie. I’ve written 8,500 words in the last 12 hours on yet another WIP that came and hit me in the face last night when I was trying to write about something else. I’ll divulge on it: it’s a sci-fi space themed story about a miner/hauler who witnesses a catastrophic event from about 1200 parsecs away and uncovers a petty dispute that unleashed a deadly secret. It’s the reason I ended up pouring so much work into it that I say “I can’t write.”
I was trying to write about the root of limerence, or why my coach is calling it that for my situation. It’s one thing to write about it when I’m in full leadership mode, writing with confidence and such. But in case my posts haven’t already declared it, I’m spending a lot of time sorting through layers of my history, trying to find who I am under the lies that I’ve built for myself. When did I start covering myself to be safe? When did I come to the conclusion that people are largely unsafe? And when did I start selling myself out just to keep the nice ones around?
When I really begin to dissect that line of internal questioning, I imagine myself in a space the size of a closet, with a few things to take up my mental energy, some snacks, and nothing able to break in, and being ultra silent so that nobody knew I was there. Unfortunately, I know exactly where this comes from, and that time in my life doesn’t need to be talked about in a blog. Maybe one day. But not tonight.
For what it’s worth, I am glad that when I try to go back that far, now, the regression to wanting to hide or seek safety from people who are unavailable is no longer dwindling into a desire to drink and then drunkenly beg people for their time, but instead coming out in the form of fictional writing that I actually engage in for hours at a time…and it also pisses me off that nobody asked if I was okay when I reached out, even when drunk, but made jokes about it or treated me like I was weird. I personally never found it funny. Drunk or not, those were real feelings, and it took alcohol to lower my inhibitions enough to say “hey, I’m in pain, please help” even if it was masked in honey-coated words or invitations to just talk. I’m even more upset at folks who actually know me and decided to treat me like an anomaly, or used the prefabricated responses like “you are going to be okay!” Like fuck you, I will be, but obviously not with your help. Send me an e-card next time if you have 30 extra seconds. I want to apologize for being harsh, but I really don’t want to be, and this is rational mind speaking. Rational mind says people who chose to give prefab answers deserve prefab friendships, and I am anything but prefab.
None of that takes away anything I did…again — behavior vs trauma. Yes bad shit happened to me, but there’s no excuse for behavior, especially when it’s repetitive. At the same time, how do you ask for help when you’re trained to dumb it down or cover it up because you’re afraid of what would happen if you said “hey this relative is hurting me” or “hey the guy at the gas station likes to trap me in the storage room unless I do things” or “hey someone said you don’t like me and now I’m crashing out because I don’t know what I’m doing wrong” or “hey they won’t let me work and I am broke and I can’t afford groceries or gas” when all I wanted was to say “please tell me you are okay with me and won’t hurt me.” I mean, god, I’ve reached out to semi-famous people just because they felt safer than my “real” friends. I love my mom, but even she’s said “just get a job” or “they can’t hurt you if you don’t let them” when she knew full well that they were threatening me every day when I lived in that house that the narcissists owned back in the day.
It’s self-forgiveness, now. It’s got nothing to do with anyone else. I understand that most people are only giving what they are able to give. I know that despite my own obstacles, I deserve more than “I believe in you.” I deserve people who are able to say “hey, I know you were drunk last night” or “I wasn’t able to reply last night but let’s split a pie and talk about it.” I’m sitting around 175 days sober, but this is the kind of stuff that may have pulled me out of it. I drank because I didn’t want to exist, not because I wanted to be drunk. I white-knuckled myself through my sobriety, and it wasn’t so massive with my coach around. But my coach isn’t my friend, she’s my confidant. And I consider myself low maintenance. I don’t really bother my friends because I am afraid that they will use it as a reason to distance themselves. I don’t trust them. When I tried to, they flaked out. Surely there’s people out there who get me…
It’s why I really try to stay neutral around people. This is literally the stuff I dumped on my coach earlier this week. Which, as she put it, is a sign that I’m starting to find and trust my own boundaries. I feel like I’m being angry. She said it’s not anger, it’s me learning to say “no, I won’t accept that.” I’m embarrassed about how I would act, especially when I was drinking. I’ve also learned that I’m embarrassed for trying to say “hey I need reassurance” while I was drunk. That a lot of my apologizing wasn’t for being drunk but for asking for reassurance. Because sober, I wouldn’t be caught dead asking to be given a booster from people who should be able to do that.
As a child, I’d ask for love and get pushed away. I’d reach out for a hug, and I remember very vividly relatives put their arms out and say “not in public” and “we don’t do that in this family.” Or worse “you’re not my son, you are my step daughter. You don’t get hugs from me.” Or … “my son gets the new clothes, you’re not my child. I’m not getting you shit.” Right in front of the woman at the check out at Walmart. I was 11.
It was the same year that I heard my three SAers telling me that they loved me and called me sweetie or baby girl and I was having an out of body experience while that was going on.
Meanwhile, at school, I had a whole troop of bullies throwing my books into the grease pits, putting tacks in my backpack or in my chair, lighting my hair on fire, or randomly punching me on the way to class.
My limerence isn’t being romantically attracted to people to the point that I’m lost in the ideal of a relationship, it’s feeling so desperate to keep people around who I feel is safe that I lose myself in the process of trying to make sure they stick around. And nobody does. I’m tired of trying to make friends or keep them around. So people get to be where they are, and I just keep my mouth shut. If I like someone, I’ve chosen to just be quiet about it. If someone I feel I’ve made a connection with is famous and a fan reaches out, I act like I’m not actually that interested. I’m just tired of people being so damned fake and superficial or conditional.
But that’s what limerence is…that’s the root of it. At first, nobody is safe. Everyone is traumatic (don’t argue with me, I had 22 active abusers at one time and that was all throughout middle school and into my sophomore year — two died before I became a junior, and two have abused me well into my 40s). And you get so damned excited that someone feels safe that you make it your life goal to simply keep them around. It doesn’t matter who they are or how close. You are quite satisfied with passive acquaintanceship because it also keeps you from having to show anything about you in order to keep them around, because you learn that you are basically shit and you don’t want anyone to know that.
Well…perhaps framing this as limerence is paying off: I’m not shit. I know nice people when I meet them. And I know kind people when I meet them. I just don’t have the ability to truly connect yet. And that’s okay. The whole point is healing, not making everything better asap. I can’t wait to learn who’s actually in my corner when I’m on the “healed” side of this. I’ve just stopped chasing and performing for folks to stick around.