I am as messed up as they come. I have attachment issues. I find it so hard to let go. I handle rejection badly, and I will sulk for days, blinds closed, in bed all day, tears at night while sleeping and after I am calm I will rationalize it and then forgive and try to have the person take me back. If anyone were to ask who is broken, I would raise both my arms then add in my feet for emphasis. Love affairs for me can be very unhealthy. I don’t think I know how to let go for I have held on to people long after it had ended. And worse? I have wanted them to take me back, even after they had hurt me pretty badly and reason told me to run.
It then becomes obvious that my childhood was messed up huh? My dad was an absentee father but I loved him and quite honestly, no one taught me anything about relationships. My folks had their issues and they split up when I was pretty young. I taught myself everything. And I guess, so are most African children. But then a childhood wound is one thing. Reopening that wound, again and again, is quite another, for it should heal right?
I look for my father in the people I date and I have a type. Authoritative, bossy, confident, extroverted, cheerful, fun, deep, philosophical, stubborn, driven, thirsty for success, classy, good-looking, possessing fashion-sense, independent, natural leaders, and rebels who see the world differently from most. Someone with a bit of a bad boy streak. You get the picture right? On the downside however they are most distant, emotionally unavailable, and wounded themselves. How can a wounded person take care of another wounded person right? I get it logically yet I still seek them out.
My dad was wounded too. His childhood was dark. He had trauma. Things that haunted him. He could not take care of someone else when in that state. The problem is, I don’t think he understood how deep his wounds were. He covered them pretty nicely and pretended they were not there. But his wounds bled into his relationships though most around him were not aware he was bleeding.
In my relationships, I have tried to fix these wounded people for I could see that they had wounds just like me. When a person is not ready to have their cuts cleaned and bandaged, you cannot force them to for the process is painful and requires that they be willing to. I thought I could convince them to have their wounds tended to for they were bleeding. A hero complex you could call it.
They left because of course they could not carry their baggage with mine as well, and to me daddy, the first boyfriend in every girl’s life, was leaving! How could I fix it? How could I make them stay? Maybe if I showed them just how competent and perfect I am, they wouldn’t. So I made myself believe that to make them stay, I had to be perfect. God knows how hard I tried to be perfect. I showed it to them. But even this was not enough to make them stay. I was not enough to make them stay. So I started believing that I was not good enough.
If I was good enough I guess daddy would not have left me. So the self-esteem issues arise and I doubt myself a lot. The wounds re-open and I sink into their depths, and into their pain whenever a guy leaves again. It is as though a confirmation gets hammered in that I am not enough and that hurts mightily. Why? Because it is a lie that does not align with my true being. They are seemingly not right for me, yet I fight for their love, try to convince them that I am worth it.
But unless it comes from me, others will never see it. It is not them that define what I am. It is me who does and I then project it out. I know my psyche is wounded. At least I am not blind to this. These people that I attract to me, seem perfect on the surface, in a way I guess they help me feel seen, valued, appreciated, adored even and this feeds my ego-self. I have risen above this, but that little child inside me never grows up.
I am broken. I have scars and I still have wounds. I may look perfect on the surface, but deep within are shards of glass in the image of a broken mirror. But this is okay. For I am tending to my wounds. It will leave deep scars. Some may be ugly to look at. But they are my mark of honor. A mark that I fought the battle and won the war. I am healing and this will just be one of those hoops that I had to jump over in this short lifetime.
As I heal, I honor the brokenness within for it made me rest as I watched the meadow, the sunset, the roses, and the soft grass. Even if I do cry myself to sleep tonight because my heart is screaming in pain, I will honor it, for this is the path to healing. I do not close my heart to love but I realize that when wounded, I cannot take care of another wounded one. I need to focus on me up until I heal. Only then can I invite another crying soul, who smiles in the light, but pounds his fist onto his pillow when darkness falls and no one’s watching, trying to make sense of it all and riling in his pain as it tries to consume him.