Well, I’ve done it. Eighty thousand words on my life. Notes, ramblings, thoughts, pain, pleasure, reflections, all of them finally pasted into one big document. Sometime into this I thought I should try to turn them into a book. Six months ago, while doing a coaching program in project development that was really at the core about personal development, I decided to really give that a try. I tried to not let that long-away goal effect my writing, though I do have to admit there are a few things I’ve left out as I am just not ready to share. Plus, it’s like therapy – if you talk about absolutely everything then it will never end. One must be focused on the desired outcome or you just end up like some lifer like a Woody Allen character, living in the knowing of their neurosis without ever letting go of them. Instead they become part of their personality . You might know one of these folks – the kind that within minutes of meeting them they tell you all of their labels and all of their traumas, as if you asked. Then they will likely talk about themselves non-stop, explaining how and why they ended up that way, completely unaware of your disinterest. Well, that’s what I don’t want the book to be like, that at least I know.

What is it about then? That is the question. One must have a theme, and be able to describe what it’s about in just two sentences. This still remains for me to figure out. Well, I guess I could start by explaining the ‘why’, that’s what they say should be at the center of everything nowadays, anyway. I started writing because I had no one to talk to. No one who I wanted to bother with all of this, no one who was interested. See, I am quite a strange bird. I enjoy solitude, but can get very lonely alone. I love people, but can’t be around them too much. I don’t really know how to act around them. I have had very few friends in my life, as I found most people painfully uninteresting, and when I find those that I do like, I assume that they wouldn’t like me in return. I never call people, rarely reach out, I think this is rooted in early rejection. When moving to a new city, I would soon forget the friends in the previous town, not because I didn’t care for them but because I figured they didn’t miss me, perhaps a lack of object permanence as well. In short, I am completely lost when it comes to relationships. I have no idea what a ‘normal’ relationship looks like. I started writing here to have someone to write to, to talk to, that wouldn’t feel burdened by all of it. Even better than talking to a therapist, not only was this free, but I wouldn’t be encumbered by spoken language, as for me it almost always feels like a performance. The written word is different. It is quiet, still, reflective. I can stop, restart, go back, erase. I read the words as I write them and there is this circular action of expression and then understanding, going deeper with each cycle, unconcerned with the reaction of another person, if I am taking up their time, talking too much about myself.

All of these strange tendencies - to wonder, to hesitate, to hold back, all of these and more – I think, unfortunately, that I have carried over from my relationship with my mother from when I was very, very small. They say that your attachment style is determined from these first relationships and from most importantly, your mother. Is this sexist? I mean, I did come out of her. Connected from before birth, I do think that this one is the most important. She was disconnected no just from me, but from her very self. This carried to me, to all of us, not just as a child but for all of my life. I have to remind myself of this, even now, as the tendency when someone dies is to idealise them. One one hand, this is a beautiful thing. I feel that when she died she left all of the bad things, the hard things, the pain here on earth with her body and left it here, free. I have to remind myself that even until the end, she was disconnected. The only time she could show love was either after a fight or after much demanding from one of us kids. It was a habit, or lack thereof, that was so deeply entrenched in her that I don’t even think she realised that it might be possible to show love. My father was similar, disconnected, if warm. He had his moments of connection, and availability, but they were not deep or often.

I can’t make light of how important these initial connections have been in the total development of my personality. I felt unworthy of love, angry at them and the world that I perceived other children, in other families, treated differently. I had to fight to receive love, demanding it to come at the end with the resolution. What a strange thing to realise, only now, after 48 years, of that 30 years of trying to find love through arguments. How terribly sad, even tragic.

So I try to show my kids love all of the time, through words, actions, hugs, and deeds. I remain at times unavailable, in ways unavailable, and I imagine how this effects them. They surely have their own personalities, the ones they arrived with, but I worry that their attachment to me and their father has effected them, too. At least, though, now I am aware and trying to do better. But this is a process that must be completely absorbed by the person, the parent, in this case, me. There is only so much trying to change that one can do at once. To be able to step outside normal behaviour to do better, this is real work – healing and parenting at once. When tired at the end of the day, this is a real challenge. Bedtime, when kids need us most to say goodbye to the waking world for almost ten hours. When we are tired, too. They don’t want to go, to leave me, they are afraid. What is it that I’ve done, or not done, to perpetuate this fear? Something to do with my own fears, my own anger, my own feelings of unworthiness that have carried over, of that I am sure.

So for now, I keep writing, in hopes that I will keep going through this process, in hopes that I will keep getting better and keep doing better for my self and my kids. Keep trying to figure it out, the roots and the causes. Keep trying to find solutions and to heal. Writing has helped me so much thus far, as so often the truth comes out as I write. The realisations happen as I’m writing. It is through this process I am able to let the information that has been hiding in my subconscious into awareness and then learn from it. It is like a magical cycle, this process. As long as I keep showing up, keep writing, whether it’s sense or nonsense that comes out, it seems to be, slowly but steadily working.

I am not yet sure of that big ‘why’. I know I want to share my story, but not every detail. I don’t want to do it for vanity, no. I do want to talk about grief, about loss, and about recovery after. I want to talk about the integration of many selves from different parts of life, from different eras, different relationships. I want to talk about coming home to one’s self, after feeling lost and unanchored for so very long. I feel like those statements are circling around the main truth, the main ‘why’. I am sure I can flesh it out if I just keep writing.