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  • Writer: Christian Van Linda
    Christian Van Linda
  • Jul 8, 2020
  • 4 min read

Covid-19 has made loneliness and isolation a national pandemic every bit as much as the virus itself. The nation is scared and alone and scared to be alone. It comes for me at an odd time. I was getting ready to re-emerge from my self isolation and attempt to start life fresh. Firmly on a path to healing and something close to optimistic in my hope for the work I'd done. One might think covid has been a roadblock in the process and in some ways it has. But mostly I've been thinking differently and despite the chaos surrounding me I've stayed relatively calm and in control of my emotions. I've been meditating more than I've ever done before. I've reached a point where when I awaken from breathing I feel a fleeting moment that feels very similar to a psychedelic mini-experience. So that's cool.


One thing that has been on my mind a lot is relationships. Not just romantic, but every bond forged between me and someone else. I am beginning to suspect they are ruined for me forever. Not only do I start judging someone the minute I think I love or even like them because that was what was taught to me as love, but I simply feel too much. The process of healing for me has largely been a process of understanding my past through my own prism. To tell my story. Live in the truth of what happened. Not the narcissistic gaslighting of my father and not the perpetual victim of her children and ex husband mentality my mom sold me as a means to deal with my fathers abuse and abandonment and her own trauma. I've learned conclusively that the templates I had for relationships were templates of abuse. I also realize the ways my mind repeats those templates in own interpersonal relationships. Which is a nice way of saying there are parts of myself that I’m afraid of.


Obviously this poses problems. On the surface it prevents me from ever really experiencing love both being given to me and me giving to other people. I have known real love. I was lucky once to be loved by a wonderful girl and it was the greatest gift I've ever been given, but I wasn't present. I didn't feel it like I should have. I didn't treasure it like it needed to be treasured. I didn't know what it was. I say i Iove you to people very early because most people are nicer to me than my mother, father, grandparents, and sister were. So even normal, compassionate interactions feel worthy of me loving a person. Imagine how i feel if we fuck. My neediness has been an invitation to be abused by damaged people. The same abuse over and over. This mindset was forged in psychological abuse and led me to a lifetime of abusive relationships of all kinds. I accepted, even sought our dysfunction at the expense of normal love. And now I am alone. Not because I didn't meet the right person. I met multiple right people. I couldn't be loved or give love. Not in any real sense of the word. I'm not sure I will ever have those experiences. It's a lot to accept. The sadness of these realizations has been overwhelming. But I am not discouraged. I love myself that's a good start.

One of the less obvious points of dysfunction is a direct product of my healing. I have had to teach myself what healthy relationships look and feel like. I am an empath. Those two things together have made it hard to exist in all my relationships. I had no boundaries and was attracted to psychologically abusive people. This means I have had a large amount of very unhealthy relationships. As I've tried to set new boundaries, I've had to accept that very few people are capable of healthy communication. As I look back, it's the reason I've felt most comfortable in isolation as I've healed. Relationships, friendships, family relationships, work relationships, these were all dangerous for me. No one was helping and everyone was making it worse. I don't really know where to go from here. I'm content, even happy alone. I'm too comfortable. I've had to make myself safe and in doing so I've drifted away from needing other people to be happy. However, I also want terribly to share myself and know someone on a cosmic level. To feel love. I have been loved by so many. But I'm afraid my trauma denied me the true experience and I want it. Even now there is a war inside me between my attachment to emotion and my desire for inner peace. Those two things don't really work together very well.


It's not as simple as me being broken and being taught what love is like that old song. It's that fixing the problem made me hyper aware of being mistreated in relationships and unable to accept most of the problems other people have as my own. I don't want to judge everyones relationship conditioning and dysfunction, but once you learn this stuff, you can't not see it. At least I can't. I feel too much already. I feel other peoples feelings. It's a fucking weight on my shoulders put here by abuse. But it's who I am. I accept myself. All of myself. I am finding ways to live within who I am, not change who I am. I like me just fine. It makes me communicating on social media or in writing easier. I can speak my mind and I am not responding to someone else's energy. The patterns of self denial and deference cultivated through decades of psychological abuse has made writing the safest way for me to express myself and be myself. I really hope it changes, but quite frankly I'm pretty happy alone.

 
 
 

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