Left.....

I have an overwhelming ever so irrational fear of being left, of making people leave.  I have a fear of making people mad, of hurting people's feelings, of offending, of wronging, of giving people the wrong impression, of being misunderstood.

These insecurities may or may not surprise you.  On this here blog it is probably hard to see these things, as I am often bold in my words, quick to give my opinions and overly open.  However I so often forget that people actually read this thing.  This blog is a journal for me and it has aided me in getting it all out with little to no consequences.  For I always encourage those who have a problem with it not to read.  In honest to goodness truth the blog has been a therapy for me because keeping "it all" in was becoming destructive....it hurt.  I often read old posts that pop up, and the post will take me back to the exact moment I wrote it, the memory is instantly replicated. And so it has become safe here.  A safe place for memories which had become scary for me at one point.  And a safe place to let it all hang out.  To share things that were important to me.  I have prayed over it and asked God to help me to be transparent here to feel safe with sharing and so He has and so I do.  I don't worry about punctuation or proper sentence structure because someday when my kids are ready to read it I want them to feel as if I am directly talking to them.  And if one of you feel touched by even a glimmer of my words I want you to feel that way too.  If you are my friend you know that's how I roll.  I like people to feel at home with me and that is how my blog needs to feel as well.  Polished and perfect is so not me.

So I want to be transparent today because my feeling of abandonment has reared its ugly head over and over and over again in the last weeks.  It is a feeling that was created in me at a very young age and a feeling that would replay several times over.  Sometimes the abandonment was real, painful, scarring and sometimes the abandonment was -if I may use the cliche description of - a God thing.  I have been left, I have been tossed and then trampled and sometimes I have just been given up.  The given up is the worst, which may be surprising.  And the given up is most often the times when I think God has actually taken from me.  

The pain I have experienced in abandonment is something that I allow to control me sometimes.  It causes me to hold back.  It causes me to hold on.  And in all honesty it scares the heck out of me.  I suppose its the scars that hold me back because I still feel as if I can stretch so much farther than I used to there are still limits in my trust.  It hurts to say that out loud because here again I fear if I share these things y'all will see me differently or weak or awful or pitiful, the ugliness goes on and on.   Its also hard to say out loud now at this point because as it appears I am a grown woman surrounded by lovely people who offer me safety and love and you also know I will preach God's love for me until the cows come home.  But sometimes I still feel like I'm five.  This simple fact used to make me feel, ashamed, embarrassed, I would hide from the past, from the memories and I would deny any recollection of how horrible things have been.  But its not all bad, I can realize positives things that have been formed in me due to those scars.  I love deeper, I give more, I strive to be a person who can be trustworthy, who can be dependable, who is a good friend, a mother who loves and is truly always there and last a daughter of God who trusts that He will always be there.

Sometimes the feeling is irrational....sometimes I let it infect my strongest closest relationships.  The ones I hold the most close, the very people I am attempting not to hurt are the ones I end up hurting the most.  And this is why.  As soon as I feel like I am being abandoned or I may be abandoned  I myself pull away in an effort to protect myself.  I never see it coming.  It is almost a wild intuitive reaction, if that makes sense.  I will take myself out of situations completely and I will focus on me.  It is selfish...it is not okay.  It is however a coping mechanism that I taught myself a long time ago and in the situations where I was actually left, tossed or trampled, the tactic actually worked.  But sometimes very of the fear of abandonment comes with the thought of sharing completely with someone, the fear of being honest, the fear of being open....because I worry if I do I will be left.  I still don't know how to recognize this when it starts to happen initially and it really does mess things up.  And sometimes the very thing I am avoiding makes me abandon someone else....that is hard to say.  

I have felt myself begin the pull away from key folks in my life in the last month.  It as I said doesn't start as an intentional exercise but it slowly picks up speed and turns into something that is ugly and completely replicates the very thing I am trying to avoid.  I am sorry to those I have hurt recently or in the past.  I am more aware of it now than ever and I am trying to fix it.  And thats all I can say about that:)  

In all openness I compensate for this fear with surrounding myself with others I push it away by pulling in closer with those that I love.  And I have had a closeness surrounding deficit ..this make no sense:)  I have no one to pull in right now and its scary and lonely. And I forget to often to pray which I am already working on in the last weeks.  But I feel alone and that is not comfortable for me and so I am forced to grow within myself, I have time to look within and I realize I gots lot of housecleaning to be doing in my heart.  In addition this reminds me that my real support, my real belonging is not here but with God and that is a great reminder! 

I will not be doing an further editing with this and I pray that it makes sense. If I edit it any further I fear I won't post it and it needs to be posted.  

This year is about rediscovery.  Maybe even redefining and I hope I have the balls to share it all here, thats what I am shooting for.  I will not let my past control my future because my future is beautiful and full of promise.