In and Out of the Woods

My aunt sent me this great quote this morning. 

"Wear your heart on the page, and people will read to find out how you solved being alive."

-Gordon Lish

And that was just the push I needed to write from "the woods", since I am not out of them, yet.  As such, the stakes for writing (and everything else) feel a lot higher. 

If you've been traveling with me on this fear of abandonment stuff, you know the backstory.  If not, here it is on a bumper sticker.  There is some "trauma" from childhood that shows up in my adult life, specifically in marriage.  It is a fear reaction, and it is reflexive.  All I've been able to do is limp through it once it is triggered, and pray that I (and my husband) can recover before it happens again.

I put trauma in quotes, because I've never thought of my childhood as traumatic.  I have not been sexually or physically abused.  Emotionally and verbally, yes, but that is a late admission, as well.  The trauma I speak of, as best as my 40-year-old conscious brain can tell and a professional counselor can affirm, is experiencing an early divorce and 11 subsequent years of painful, tearful separations from my Dad whom I adored, after visiting him every weekend. 

This recurring pain was more than a 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, and 15-year-old could process.  So, the thoughts, beliefs, feelings, and physical reactions that went with the pain got "stuck" in my brain.  Twenty five years have passed and it is still there, largely unchanged.

There are diagnoses that name this very thing and physiological treatments for "moving" the stuff into a conscious place where it can be processed.  I am looking into that and will keep you posted.  This is a new and exciting revelation for me.

Since visiting a counselor twice by myself and once with my husband, I have written a pain narrative, realized I am 100% responsible for regulating my own emotions, explored restoration therapy, made a plan, and decided I would work on detachment as a part of that plan. 

I felt more sure of this after reading an excerpt from Deep Is the Hunger by Howard Thurman...

"The basis of one's inner togetherness, one's sense of inner authority, must never be at the mercy of factors in one's environment, however significant they may be.  Nothing from outside a man can destroy him until he opens the door and lets it in."

I've read much on this idea, and know there's some truth in it.  So, I thought I would try it.  I closed the door on my husband.  He is the trigger for the old stuff, so I reasoned that if I didn't let him in, I would be safe.  And it felt safe.  But, it also felt unfulfilling, sterile, and not sustainable. 

Today is my first day of being less attached to the idea of being fully detached.  It doesn't work. 

So, I'm back in the ring.  

Leaving is not an option, but thinking about it is a friend that I like to keep close.  She reminds me that I don't want to leave.  I want to love and be loved.  Know and be known.  Understand and be fully understood.  Patience and perseverance.  We celebrate our fifteenth wedding anniversary in less than a week.  The woods are home to many a lovely creature.  And, right now, I am one of them.