It seemed out of the blue that I was experiencing some recurring, nagging, negative feelings/beleifs about myself in my other realtionships:
11/09/08 I wonder where my feelings of being excluded come from. Sometimes when my friends do things w/o me I feel excluded despite the fact that I know these friends would never exclude me. I don’t believe that I should be invited to every happening or event in my friends lives, but there are times that when I am not, I feel deeply hurt by that. For instance the camping trip this summer and the trip to Detroit Institute of Arts last January when my husband was out of town and I certainly could have used an outing like that. I feel like I am undesirable. That if I was desirable then I’d be thought of and asked to go along. I mean if I am as good of a person and friends as I want to be, then who could resist wanting to be with me, right? (Trust me this is not as arrogant as that sounds)I have these negative beleifs despite the fact that I am invited to do many things with my friends. And they do enjoy my company.
So where do these feelings originate? I gave that some consideration this morning and allowed my mind to try to explore it. I know those feelings were very strong as a child. I never fit in, I always felt excluded. Is it part of the youngest child syndrome added with so many years between my siblings and me? I never fit in with their lives; I was much too young to fit in. The only chance I had to fit in was with my cousins who were 2-3 years older than me and even that felt complicated at times. My sister-in-law used to get me and her little brother together to play once in a while and while he was nice and I thought we got a long well, I guess he’d complain to her that I was too bossy. So maybe I was not a joy to be around because I always had to have my way.-I don’t know. Going back to my cousins there seemed to be one way for me to fit in and that wasn’t a very healthy way to fit in at all. It creates a lot of turmoil for me to think that I must have believed that the only way for me to be loved and accepted was to do something (unacceptable) bad and to share in naughty secret games with my cousins. We were often cast aside by our older siblings who didn’t want us around so we had to find solace and a sense of belonging in ourselves. Outside of that I didn’t belong, I couldn’t relate to the “normalcy” that other children seemed to have to fit in with each other. Who could be normal when tied to an anchor of fear and uncertainty the way that I was? To be sequestered deep inside myself so no one could ever understand the depth and darkness of my world. I don’t blame myself now, but that doesn’t alleviate the pain that I am feeling today. Maybe I need to grieve this. Maybe I need to be the adult to finally have that far reaching kindness and compassion I desire for my little girl self and to reach deep inside of myself and let her cry. No one else was able to save me, but I can. I am trying to provide that. I want to listen. It hurts so very much and it even sparks my wondering how anyone else could ever understand how much this really hurts and how much this interferes with my finding purpose and meaning in my life. It is right in front of me but it still feels so unattainable, so vague sometimes and so out of reach as if it is only make believe, a fantasy; A mirage that disappears every time I seem close to being able to grasp it.
My right arm is becoming weak again. I feel exhausted and just want to go back to bed. I wish this could work itself out while I sleep so that I could wake up and not feel this way anymore. What is the significance of my wanting to kneel at someone’s lap and cry? I visualize that all the time with my T and I have done so with my husband a couple times, including just a few minutes ago where I wept bitterly for several minutes like a little child. I don’t like being a child in my husband’s arms, it seems so contradicting to what my relationship is supposed to be with him. I am a woman, his wife, not his child. He does such a good job comforting me and that is good, but becoming a child in his presence seems inappropriate.