November 7th - Discoveries
Laying in bed last night... I was contemplating the nature of my desires out of my life. Something I do with great frequency.. helps me to make sure I've got the right goals outlined, and that I'm moving in the right direction.
Wolfe was up writing in his journal, and I was curled up in the dark under the covers in the little nest of pillows around me that I like to create when I'm in bed alone. And I was filled with this great sense of longing. I was thinking about relationships and what I want out of relationships.. and about my past relationships. And this longing.. this deep inside me pervasive longing...
It all started I think, when I was looking at a ring of mine that was slipped over the basket hanging on my bed posts... A ring that my sister had given my mother and my mother had given to me. I had this sudden impulse, that I wanted to give it to Ty. Remembering a conversation of hers around not having things from her childhood, and another conversation of her not having many things from her mother. This impulse, connected to this yearning.. a yearning really really deep and profound inside me, I think that goes way way way back. It's this feeling of loving and wanting to give that love out somehow to make a connection.. a bridge with another woman.
I've had a lot of women in my life.. I've always had a lot of women in my life. Though all those relationships.. have been challenging. I was raised with both my mother and my grandmother in the house.. as well as having three sisters. My oldest sister whom I was closest to.. died when I was around nine. I say around nine.. because I've blocked enough stuff around it, that my actual age, the actual year is 'slippery' in my head. My second oldest sister was raised in Europe with her biological mother, and only entered into my life when I was much older. The sister closest in age to me, was still 5 years older than me, and so like another mother to me... (just like the sister that died was). Closest in age, and through the years, closest to me, but still in many ways, very removed. I was in a world all my own, as a little child. My mother was unpredictable. Hot and cold. She was a very loving, physically cuddly, sensual enveloping powerful presence one moment, and sharp cruel cold distant hurt the next. That quickly. Her mood would switch with no warning, no provocation... and the words she could dish out from that space, more painful than any slap I had ever received.. and I did receive the occasional one. My mother loves me very much, but my mother's love for me.. has always been a deeply selfish thing. I think my mother saw me as an extension of herself, of her body... emotionally incestuous.. when my oldest sister died she 'climbed on my back'.. we became enmeshed, and she was either to open with me, or too closed, things were often confused, intense. I used to fantasize.. that maybe my oldest sister, who was 12 years older than me.. was my 'real' mother. I know that's not the case... but it was a dream to escape in to.
I think that yearning... that feeling, so old, so deep.. comes from my ever present longing I had to be loved by my mother in a way that was about me, and not just about her. That was about loving me. That wasn't about sharing her pain, sharing her love, sharing herself and her issues through a form of chaotic verbal challenges. But about something less damaged. I tried all the time to play the roles I thought she expected of me, to be emotionally supportive, to be enmeshed and to be her confidant, to take her verbal and emotional abuses, to try to keep giving and giving and giving of myself, believing somehow, that if I did... it would come back to me like that. It never did.
I realized, finally, totally, completely, a few years ago, that it never would, and I let it go. I just let it go. Then I looked back at all the friendships I'd had with women over the years, where I'd repeated the same pattern over and over and over again... and said, I have to stop doing this. I have to stop giving into a black hole.. bleeding myself out. All the women I've fallen in love with... cared for, and strove to give and give and give to.
That part of it, I still want to do. That yearning is still there.. I lay in the dark, looking at what little light there was reflecting off of that ring.. and thinking about how much I still want to give... how that impulse is still so strong in me, how I want to give love. How I want to give love, and have it returned. And a part of me gets scared, that maybe my wanting to share love with a woman is selfish, a selfish love like my mother's selfish love for me, and I try to not to get swept into thinking about the nature of love, and how you can determine.. how selfish it is. I think more about how I really want a woman in my life, in my family... as a partner, not my biological family, my chosen family.. A woman who will take everything I have to give, because I need to give it. But then, will also give back to me, who doesn't see it as a chore, an imposition, a drain, but who wants as much as I do.. to connect. Someone with a need that slips into mine, matches me where I'm at.
Can I be fulfilled without it, yes. I already am. But I don't want to let it go... I want to find that, I want to realize that yearning, that life long part of me, I want to actualize it in a way that is healthy, that can work. I don't want to let it slip away, I don't want to throw it out along with the realization that I will never get it from my mother. I want to reclaim it elsewhere.
I lay in bed and I dreamed about that relationship... with a woman who would love me, unconditionally. Who would meet me in that place. A relationship with the kind of security I have with Wolfe, with the kind of deep trust and knowing, that this person would always be there for me. Will never intentionally hurt me, will honor me. Will take pleasure and joy in who I am, and all that I have to give. Someone to laugh with, someone to cry with... someone that I never have to be afraid of.
I don't know if that relationship can ever exist for me... I don't know how much of my pattern of playing the partner to a dysfunctional role in a female to female relationship is still there.. I don't know what it is I don't know.. what I might not be seeing in myself. All I know is I want to keep trying... I've got nothing to lose.
tears...
Katt