Wild abandon

This is actually the post that I thought I was going to do Thursday, but it feels like that's not quite the right order.

To begin with, I am going to tell you about something that didn't happen, but was only imagined.

What did really happen was that my father took me to the dentist, and to Tryon Creek after. Our family dentist was on Terwilliger at the time, and we had family history related to Tryon Creek, so that made sense.

It is a little more surprising that it was my father taking me instead of my mother. I think I was around four, and my younger sisters were born a month after I turned five, so it could have had something to do with her pregnancy.

Anyway, he had brought a pack of Hostess cupcakes. I got some on my face and he took out a kerchief. 

Recognizing the object and its traditional use, I said that if he needed to sneeze, he could use that. 

He responded, "Or if there was a girl with a dirty face."

I suddenly had the wildest vision of him coming across another, cuter little girl, and going away with her.

He didn't do anything wrong in this moment, but I had so little confidence in him already.

My father would never have left a child alone in a wooded area. He did end up abandoning all of us eventually, with some betrayals only a few years off. I didn't exactly know, but even then I sensed it.

Now I want to talk about some potentially related things.

I cry at movies. Way too easily. Sometimes at trailers. Sometimes remembering a movie a week later. 

It seems to be worse if it is related to parental or pet issues, when relationships are disrupted or affection is not reciprocated. Specific films that have gotten me very badly are Coco, Babe, Up, Lilo & Stitch, Bolt -- which I haven't even seen, just a video from it -- and not a movie, but the Jellaby series has a missing father anyway, and then there's a monster that bonds with a human, gets abandoned, and turns evil, and I just dissolve.

I realize a lot of people have cried at those movies, but for me it feels like it is all out of proportion, like I am broken inside and in those moments I have lost the ability to do damage control.

In one of the books I have read recently, a therapist had a client who had severe fear issues that were damaging her relationship with her daughter. They worked it back to the client's mother having a breakdown when the client was a child, so she was sent to her grandmother, and there were never real explanations for all of the separations. Ultimately, she'd had deep losses that she had never been able to grieve.

Well, the grief hit, and then she just spent hours crying. I had thought that maybe you could know that you had missed grief and acknowledge that without having to actually go back and shed all the tears that you hadn't shed then, but maybe not.

The other thing I read in the past year was some belief - though not consensus - that all addiction is rooted in fear of abandonment.

It doesn't seem right to call any of my compulsive behavior addiction, because they are all for pretty tame things. In fact, I haven't played a single game of Spider Solitaire or Minesweeper this year, and I am not in withdrawal, though sometimes, when restless and not sure what to do, I think about it. 

I am also drinking more pop, and that may not be unrelated.

(I am very grateful that my religious upbringing has kept me away from the usual addictive substances, because I clearly never needed that.)

I nonetheless may have some fear of abandonment. 

It is also possible that I have unprocessed grief. The early indoctrination that no one wanted to hear me cry makes that more likely than not.

I think I have gotten better at recognizing my emotions as valid, and letting myself feel things. I probably do still keep myself too busy. Habits matter, no matter how intellectual you get.

The way I conduct relationships may also be influenced by abandonment issues, because the inability to rely on people staying was reinforced in other ways. Some of my adaptations may be insufficient.

That will come up in other posts, but I think it is similar to when I was trying to learn to trust. It's not that you can trust everyone, or know for sure whom you can trust, but you can learn that you can survive someone letting you down. 

This feels a lot less confident than some of the other things I have written recently, but they are also newer concepts for me. I haven't had as much time to internalize them, or test them.

I don't know the next time I will sit in a darkened theater, or the next time I will do on a date, and there are questions.

But I am better about myself.

Related posts:

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2020/04/anodyne.html

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2016/06/trusting-part-1.html 

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2016/06/trusting-part-2.html 

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2016/06/learning-to-trust-in-me.html