Otherwise Maladroit

09 November 2003

I'm breaking down. These past few days I always feel panicked. I can't laugh and it's
affecting my digestion and I feel like the bogeyman is near. I am terrified the same way I am when it's nearing All-Souls-Day and knowing that the TV would be filled with the holiday. I know my weakness is that I easily panic when I don't feel secure or safe. There is no haven. The one pillar that should have sustained me forever is the cause of my panic. I can't turn to my relatives because they nod and nod and nod but inside some are smiling, and most are apathetic and all of them, do not understand how it feels. I was never separated from my mother. She is the one constant in my life. And no one can ever understand how betrayed I feel. Everything I am came from her. Almost all my early memories is of her. I was never close to anyone else. I didn't have cousins or other children to grow up with. I was so isolated and alone as a child and she can never understand what it meant to me when she got home from work. How I was so frightened when she came home late, because that could mean forever with Lola, forever in that silent house that was not sympathetic to children, where the corners lurked shadows of resentment and jealousy and despair. If she never came back that meant forever living with people who just
hated living because they were so awkward and insecure. Living forever with people who gossiped and gossiped and gossiped and teased and teased and teased and ridiculed and ridiculed and ridiculed. Of course, tormented and tormented and tormented. I hate these people, and it was her that protected me from them. I was terribly shy as a child and I really was afraid of people. As a child I only saw other people as a source of torment and fear. I expected to be laughed at, but even when they did and I was prepared for it, it hurt so much and my pride was so wounded, so I started not caring about anything. Even today I cannot feel beyond myself. I've never allowed myself to demand of other people, to maintain their friendship, to deepen the history between me and a friend. Because it will hurt a hundred times more if that kind of hurt came from a friend. I know I will never lose my fear of being laughed at, and I know I'll always have this defensive mechanism where I numb myself to everything. I know I can love intensely one moment and walk away forever the next moment without going through the seven stages of denial or days and days of indecision. When someone that close laughs at me I'll immediately shut down and walk away. I know I'll never be with anyone at all.

And she was the haven. She loved me and loved me and I know she always will as stupidly and sincerely as a puppy, but as stupidly and sincerely as a puppy. I can kick her, she'll still love me, but she won't understand why I was hurting. She's as
obtuse as a deaf man beside Big Ben. She doesn't understand at all how much I lost when she traipsed into the mistakes that she made without a second of caution despite all the warnings and the hints. I lost my haven. I lost faith in the person that has protected me from the bogeyman - the paralyzing embarrassment and shame and feeling of inadequacy, of ugliness and disappointment. She'll never understand that what I lost was her. I'll never be safe again. No one will ever mean as much or will ever be half as significant as her image has been for the most crucial years of my life. My childhood fears are flaring up - both psychological and emotional. Furthermore, I don't have a confessor, because she was that to me too. When I lost trust in her my lifeline was cut too.

posted by Otherwise Maladroit @ 4:38 PM