Security
What makes a person feel safe, secure? It’s one of the “big” ones on Maslows hierarchy of needs (see image below)If you’re unfamiliar with it, it’s basically levels of needs where if you don’t meet certain needs, you aren’t able to meet the next expectations. For example, if a person is always hungry and scared, they aren’t going to be able to focus on enlightenment, only that their stomach is rumbling. So, physiological needs are first, safety and security are next. This is where I have never progressed past.
I realize I have no “secure” attachment to anyone, even my kids, my husband, or my mom (all people I love very much, and I can only assume love me too). It makes me feel like a sociopath. I believe that every relationship I have is conditional and transactional and that I must do certain things or be a certain way to be worthy of having any type of relationship. My brain is very skewed into thinking that even my children or mother will only love me if I do certain things for them, or act like a certain type of person. I’ve been with my husband for the better part of two decades, and every.single. day I wonder what I’m going to do to make him leave me. I said to my husband yesterday that if anything dire happened to me-that if I was desperate, sobbing, and bleeding-I wouldn’t feel comfortable going to literally not one person’s house. I would rather (and have) gone to a mental hospital instead. I’ve been in these situations, and I’ve been in them alone. In my experience, the few times I’ve asked for help, I’ve been denied. Or been told that the way I’m feeling isn’t warranted. And quite frankly, that my repeated trauma is really just exhausting for others (starting as kid).
After Ian got hurt, and I had a pretty severe breakdown, I understood why I have always felt that way. I had obviously just suffered something so traumatic that no one can objectively say that a breakdown wasn’t warranted. Yet when it happened, I became a problem, a disgrace. The way I was acting was considered shameful. Legitimately, no one wanted to talk to me-friends, family, even the crisis workers acted like I was annoying. But most of these people never even laid eyes on Ian, didn’t see what we had to do every day. A lot of, “ your so blessed to have him” without the acknowledgement of pain and grief. Everyone could easily see and understand why I was at the lowest point in my life (and that truly was the lowest I’ve EVER been) yet not one person would have let me even sleep on their couch for a night if I wanted to because I was drinking. Some people in my life “dealt” with me, but they made it known that they disapproved of me and wanted to control my response to what happened-that I wasn’t handling things “right”. So, if it was hard to deal with me when my pain was obvious and considered justified, why would I have ever gone to anyone with things that could actually be unlovable? And, if help is given with an IOU attachment, it’s transactional.
(Disclaimer: I absolutely understand that if someone will have a negative impact on the children in a situation, what’s best for the kids is more important. I would never expect someone to put me ahead of their kids or my own. I also don’t think someone should help someone if doing so would bring them down too.)
When you shame someone for having dirt on their face, you might as well dump a bucket of mud on their head.
I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to repair that. I feel bad because I know my mom and husband want to be that person (and some friends too), but I have also felt very inconvenient to them too. So, I have tried to be what I can’t find. The high I’ve been searching for my whole life is the feeling I assume people get when the world has chewed them out and spit them up and they collapse into their mothers arms, with tears and snot, and the feeling of their mother’s heartbeat calms them and makes them feel as safe as their mother’s womb. My moms husband’s didn’t let that happen, so I can never remember that feeling.
So, I’ve tried to create that space within myself. I hope my kids can find that safety in me. People always come to our house if they need to. I won’t shy away or tell you your wrong for wanting to kill your self. If you tell me you had to sell yourself to buy drugs- I will see the immense pain you must have felt, not the way you tried to kill it. If you say you wish you never had kids-I’ll see that for whatever reason parenting has been so difficult (not hard to see why), but I won’t see a terrible parent.
You’re safe here.
