An Embarrassing Admission
Entry posted by Poppy_ ·
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I suck at blogging and I’m sorry for that.
When I started this blog, I posted every Friday and THOUGHT I might post more than that. Nowadays, I’m lucky to get a post in once a month! If that’s not considered slacking, I don’t know what is. It’s not intentional, I just can’t always get my head around an idea of anything I think will be worth posting. It seems that today though, I have some things to share. So, buckle up! We may be experiencing some turbulence soon.
Right now, I am about four days away from moving into my first apartment. (I actually starting typing this on Monday and I’m just now getting it posted, so let the record show that it’s now only TWO days away!). I’m 23, but I have stayed at home with my parents because I didn’t really have a need to move and I honestly didn’t feel I’d be able to afford to live on my own. In the past few weeks, I have decided to take a leap of faith and go for it. I found a cute little apartment that is still in my town and not too far from everything I am familiar with. My apartment is in the back of the complex facing away from everything. I will be upstairs and I have a sweet little balcony that I am looking forward to sitting on while I have a glass of wine in the evenings.
Now, I AM excited. Truly – I am. But with all of the excitement I’m feeling, there’s twice as much anxiety. I am incredibly stressed and worried and honestly, I’m not a hundred percent sure why. I mean, I could venture out a couple of reasons… You know, money for one. What if I can’t afford it? What if I made this huge decision and I’m underprepared, and I got in over my head and I fail? I guess, worst case, I could pick up a second job. I’m already anticipating that happening. I don’t really WANT a second job and I don’t know what kind of job would work with my schedule, but I may not have many options here. I guess we can worry about that when the time comes.
Another thing I’m worried about? The Stuff. You know what I’m talking about. I made a list of things I would need when moving out and it was pretty long. There are tons of things I thought I would need, but most of it didn’t have to happen right away. I thought of appliances like a toaster, a microwave, a vacuum cleaner. I thought of furniture like a couch, dining table and chairs, an entertainment stand. I tried to think of EVERYTHING. Even the stuff that wasn’t important! Yesterday, I went to Target to do some browsing and I realized, in that moment, how many things I hadn’t thought about. The SMALL things. “The Stuff.” Why hadn’t it crossed my mind that I would need to buy a trashcan? Oh, and I made sure to write down that I would need silver wear – I didn’t want to forget that! But what goes with silver wear? A silver wear holder/organizer/thing. Why didn’t I think of that? And who remembers to buy a pizza cutter? I spotted one yesterday and almost tossed it in the cart until I realized it was twelve dollars! FOR A PIZZA CUTTER?
That’s just the kitchen. What else am I missing? Who knows? And the worst part is, I won’t even realize I’m missing some of this stuff until I need it. I’m going to forget that I wanted to find a cheaper pizza cutter until I’m taking a delicious, fresh pizza out of the oven and realize my only options are to cut it with scissors or a butter knife, at which point, I would probably just eat it whole. It’s just that I didn’t think of things like strainers and cutting boards and apple slicers.
Don’t even get me started on prices. Have you ever tried to buy a decorative pillow? Why, in the name of home furnishings, is a small pillow over $40? Why? It doesn’t even really serve a purpose aside from looking pretty! I could get my entertainment stand for the price of three of those stupid pillows. Also, I never appreciated the boujee-ness of a trashcan until price checking those yesterday. A nice one is upwards of a hundred bucks. For what? It literally holds GARBAGE. Oh, and I’ve just realized while typing this that I will now also have to buy trash BAGS. It just never ends.
I suppose those are the first things that come to mind when I try to think of why I’m so stressed about this. I hoped typing this out would help reveal some hidden fear of mine but, it didn’t. It’s just a big change. I’ve never lived alone before. This is all new to me. And while it IS very exciting, there are just so many unknown things going into this and once it’s done, there’s no going back. I’m a preparer. I like to have things prepped and planned and I like to know how things are going to play out and that’s just not an option here. I have to let go of a little bit of control and that’s not easy.
Ah….there it is. I knew it would come out.
It’s the loss of control. The change itself. The routine will not be the same for a while and I’m not good with that. I like things a very specific way and I don’t like it when they get messed up. I know this is inevitable, but that doesn’t make it any easier. It still sucks. But, I know that I will be okay, one way or another. It will work out. I’m just ready to take on the new challenge and get settled.
There are some other stressors in my life right now that I know are also contributing to my sleepless nights and loss of appetite. Some…less exciting stressors.
As some of you may or may not know, I have Borderline Personality Disorder. A big, fancy disorder that basically means that I am clingy, moody, self-destructive, and I have attachment issues. There’s more to it, of course, and it really is serious, I just wish that it wasn’t something I had to deal with. I hate the way it makes me feel and what it does to my brain. I don’t even know what a “normal” relationship looks like. When I first started therapy a couple years ago, my T told me that I had the emotional levels of a fifth grader. Ouch. That was before I knew about BPD and that I had it.
I’ve had attachment issues for as long as I can remember. There was always someone in my life that I was clinging to – someone I thought I loved. Not love in a romantic kind of way, but usually in a maternal type of way. I have a lot of emotional issues with my mother and I have this void in my life from her that I have always tried to fill with other people. It’s incredibly embarrassing. I HATE that I’m like this.
When I think back on all of those past relationships with women that I admired, it makes me want to vomit. The thought that they showed me kindness, and then I stuck to them and hated being away from them. I don’t know what they thought of me. Maybe they thought it was sweet or maybe they were even a little flattered, but to me, I feel like it’s more likely that they were annoyed. They probably didn’t want me to be that attached to them. They likely didn’t want to fill the role that I wanted them to fill. But when I was a kid, I didn’t notice any of that. To be honest, I didn’t even know that what I was doing, or feeling, was wrong. I just thought I was special. I thought I was loved.
It wasn’t until I got older that I realized something was wrong. This wasn’t normal. Normal teenage girls wanted to hang out with their friends at school, I wanted to hang out with my teachers. Normal teenage girls had friends their age, but I was better friends with my friends’ mothers. Don’t get me wrong – I DID have some friends my own age and those relationships were fine. I was just more interested in whatever women were around instead of the kids.
This has happened all throughout my life. There are so many women I could tell you about which just makes this all the more embarrassing. The thing is, though, that none of these relationships lasted. It was usually the case that they – for whatever reason – decided to cut off communication. I had a couple of people just move away and drop contact. I’ve had a couple of people betray my trust and tell my mother the things I told them. I had people decide that they just couldn’t be “that” person for me anymore. They would tell me I needed therapy or try to convince me to talk to someone else. Then there was one woman that actually did keep her word and never left. I was very attached to her for a long time, but things changed in one evening.
My mom knew about this pattern – she had witnessed it. When I was a kid, I didn’t worry about hiding anything because I didn’t think it was wrong. As I got older, my mom would eventually find out about these things and I would get in trouble for being attached to someone or trusting them with personal information. It got to the point where I knew I had to be better at hiding these things or I would get my phone taken away or I wouldn’t be allowed to talk to these people. I wouldn’t text them if I was around my mother and I would try not to talk about them too much. I would try to make sure that our in-person conversations were light, and nothing looked secretive. It didn’t always work and there were some of these things that I picked up on later in life. I TRIED to do a good job, but I learned more with each person that my mom found out about.
One night, I was sitting on the couch discreetly texting the aforementioned person I was close to that has still never left me. I think my mother may have asked who I was texting and so I told her. I didn’t want to lie in case she took my phone. Then she told me to be careful talking to her because she had been talking about things I did in my past like I was currently doing it. I was confused. I knew she meant cutting because this person knew I was self-harming again, but my mother did not know. I think I may have denied being close with her, but my mom just dismissed me and went to bed.
I was upset because I thought my trust had been betrayed. The next day, I was talking to the same person and I asked if she mentioned anything to my mom about what I had told her. She said no – she promised she hadn’t. But I didn’t really believe her because why else would my mom say something like that? How would she know? To this day, I STILL don’t know what to believe. I think we kind of kept talking and I told her that I believed her, but I was still nervous to mention anything else to her. I didn’t trust her anymore. After that, communication died down and eventually, we weren’t talking every day. We barely spoke at all. I know she said that she didn’t say anything, I just couldn’t believe it, I guess. I felt too… worried.
We are still friends today. We talk sometimes, but not usually about anything too serious. I did tell her about my R because I didn’t have anyone that I felt I could talk to. She still loves me and cares about me, but it’s not the same. It’s kind of awkward now…in a way. She actually just invited me over for a cookout on Saturday and I’ll probably go. We’re cordial, but I don’t love her like I did. I felt like she betrayed me, even though she may not have.
She’s the only one that has stuck around and part of that is because we go to the same church. BUT, I have to give her some credit. She didn’t leave me or cut off contact – that was mostly me. I just stopped trusting her. There were people after her that I grew attached to instead and I didn’t need her anymore anyway. But those people left. The last person I was attached to hurt me the worst. Maybe it seemed worse because it had happened so many times at this point that I just couldn’t take it anymore, or maybe what she did just really was THAT bad, I don’t know. But things were different after this one.
I think I’ve mentioned this in a blog before so I won’t delve into full detail, but I will give the gist of what happened. She was my personal trainer, basically. My mom and I (as well as a few other ladies) worked out with her in her garage and did crossfit type training. She gave me extra attention though. She helped me with my food, workouts, my back, everything. And I opened up to her about stuff. I opened up about my eating disorder and some things I had done in my past. She helped me with food because she said it was important that I eat properly while doing this type of training. She would ask periodically if I was keeping my food down or if I had eaten. She had me logging my calories so she would know I was eating enough. I had another situation that I don’t feel comfortable sharing, but I did tell her about this thing too.
After a while, things got better. I was eating, I wasn’t purging, and the other situation had been taken care of. About a month after things got better, she went to my mom at church one night and told her everything. Everything I told her. She knew that the ONE person that I didn’t want to know any of this, was my mother, and she told her anyway. I was devastated. Heartbroken. Not to mention that my mother wasn’t happy about all of the things that were going on.
After that, I decided I was done. I could never trust someone after that. I learned that if I wanted something to stay secret, I simply couldn’t tell anyone. The only person I could trust was myself.
Being that I had all these attachment issues, this was the first time in my life that I put up walls and didn’t let anyone in. I am the type of person that needs to talk about what’s going on in my life – I need a person. But after that, I would never have a “person” again. I couldn’t.
And that worked for a while. I kept everything to myself, I didn’t talk to anyone, I didn’t cry in public or even show if anything was wrong. Everything was a secret. Everything was personal.
About seven or eight months after that, I decided to start therapy. My parents are VERY anti-therapy. They don’t agree with it and I had previously been told that I was not allowed to go to therapy. I was 19 at this point, but I still lived at home and there was no way I could make therapy happen. Aside from actually going, I couldn’t afford it. But I saw an add for online therapy. I looked into it and it was something I could (sorta) afford and I felt like I could easily keep it a secret.
I signed up and made it happen. I quickly became attached to my therapist. We checked in every day in the evenings. This became one of those attachments like all the others. I had told her about my attachment issues, but she was honestly no help at all. At the time, I didn’t care because I was attached to her and I just wanted to talk to her. In hindsight, I should’ve pushed the issue more or found someone else. I saw her for over a year before I stopped. I started seeing someone in person and decided after about 2 months that I didn’t need both of them anymore. That’s all a whole story in itself but maybe one day I will delve into the journey of my therapy.
Now that I was seeing someone in person and wasn’t seeing my online T anymore, I didn’t have that attachment. I will admit to being attached to my current T, but not in that same way. I’m not…overly attached. It doesn’t feel the same as the other attachments I’ve been talking about and I know I’m not the only person that has gotten attached to their T. I know for a fact it happens a lot, so I don’t feel bad about it.
Anyway, I was back to just myself and my T and I didn’t have that connection to anyone and that was absolutely fine. I was making it work and I was focused on healing from my R. There was one more person after that that I had kind of gotten attached to, but she was a hard person to be attached to. She never answered texts and we barely spoke. I still had that attachment, it just wasn’t as strong, I guess. I actually thought that I had learned from what happened and I was fine being alone now. I felt like I had changed and I wouldn’t get attached like that anymore. Until now.
So, this is the reason I brought all of that attachment stuff up to begin with. I’m so nervous to talk about this. It’s like, talking about what happened in the past is embarrassing enough, but to admit that it’s happening right now is nearly unbearable. I need to talk about it though. I need to process what happened. If I don’t, something bad might happen. I just want to salvage what I can and hope that everything isn’t wrecked for good.
Anyway… I have this friend. I’ve spoken about her in my blogs several times, actually. She’s the one friend that I talk about that doesn’t have a cute little nickname in my blogs like The New Guy does. So, we’re going to call her… Cat. It sounds close to what I call her in real life, and she likes cats so… I don’t know. It’s all I got. It will just have to do.
Cat and I have been friends for nearly a year. I only know our friendiversary because it’s on the same day as another anniversary of mine and that was the day we started talking and getting to know each other. I remember when we started talking and how sincere and kind she was. I felt like there was no way someone could care so much about someone they had just met – but she did. We kept talking and getting to know each other and I started opening up more about both my past and my present. After all, she was gaining my trust.
We were talking one day and somehow, the subject of my attachment issues came up. I was so panicked. I had tried SO hard to keep that part of me from her because I was so ashamed and embarrassed about what I had done. I was afraid that if she knew, she would decide that she didn’t want to talk or be friends with me anymore and I would have to hurt all over again. Despite my feeling this way, I was still honest, and I told her things that I haven’t admitted to anyone because I felt so awful about them.
She didn’t leave though. She was kind and gracious and gave me a chance to do things right this time – she said she wouldn’t hold my past against me. I did feel, though, that she deserved some reassurance that I wouldn’t do to her what I had done in the past. So, I promised her that our relationship wouldn’t be like that. I wasn’t going to let it happen again. I have never admitted this to her, but I think the promise was made for a lot of different reasons. I think I made that promise because I knew it was already starting to happen – I was already getting attached. I think I was not only trying to convince her, but also myself that this wasn’t going to happen again. I thought if I tried hard enough, I could keep it from happening. I was also afraid that if she knew how attached I might become or that I was already getting attached, she would think the best thing to do would be to put space between us. That terrified me.
She wouldn’t have been wrong. I KNOW that these attachments aren’t healthy, and I know that putting distance between us would probably be the best thing to do if I was getting too attached. I guess that’s what scared me. Cat is such a… wise and strong person… I knew that she would want to do the right thing for both of us and that would be to cool it for a while and not talk every day. I just… didn’t want that.
I made a deal with myself that I would try my best to keep whatever feelings I had towards her to myself. I wouldn’t let her know how attached I was or how much I loved her. If I kept it to myself, nothing would have to change, and I wouldn’t get hurt. Things didn’t really play out the way I anticipated, though.
Things were fine for a while. She knew I had attachment and abandonment issues so when I told her things like ‘I don’t want you to go’ or ‘please don’t leave’, I knew it would be chalked up to the way I had been hurt before. The thing is, she KNEW about my past hurts and that this was a fear of mine and she understood that. She reassured me on many occasions that she wasn’t going to leave me. Little by little, I started to trust that. She has proved herself several times. I just think that I may have finally become ‘too much’.
Cat and I were talking a few nights ago and it just kind of… came out. I was telling her about my T session from the day before and when I said that we were going to start working on my attachment issues, Cat asked why that came up and why my T was concerned. There was no avoiding it now. My T isn’t even concerned about my relationship with Cat – she LIKES that I’m friends with her. Even though the answer to her question wouldn’t be that I was too attached to HER, I knew it would still come out. And it did.
I kind of made her tell me what she thought because there was a chance that I was wrong and that wasn’t what she was thinking. But, I wasn’t wrong. I told her that it was happening again – the attachment. After a bit more back and forth, it came out that I was attached to her.
I guess it was pretty obvious, I had just hoped that it wouldn’t be because I didn’t want her to leave. Now that I had actually admitted it, I was so embarrassed. So ashamed. I still am. I can’t believe I actually told her. She knows how I feel now. The weight of this is almost unbearable. I wish I could just disappear.
She wasn’t mean and didn’t belittle me. She said she understood why it happened. But she also talked about how unhealthy it was and I know that’s true, but it made me feel so bad. It made me feel like I was dirty and disgusting and like I had done something wrong. I know she didn’t intend to make me feel bad, but the shame is just eating me up. I really don’t know what to do now.
We’ve spoken a few times since that night, but every time I message her now, I just feel like she thinks I’m messaging because I’m obsessed with her or something and she feels uncomfortable. And that’s just not the case. I tried to tell her that, while I do feel overly attached to her, it’s not the same as it has been in the past. I don’t feel the same TYPE of attachment. This is different… it’s hard to explain. In the past, it’s always been a maternal attachment, someone that I felt close to like they were my mother. This isn’t like that, though. I don’t look at her like a mother figure and I don’t love her like a mom. It’s also not a romantic type of attachment. I do love her very much, but not in any sort of romantic fashion. And while I know it’s not maternal or romantic, I still can’t put my finger on what exactly it is. I’ve never had this happen before. Maybe this is just a…. friend attachment? Is that a thing?
She’s said that she wants me to get help and deal with these issues and I know she means that to be supportive and she’s only saying it because she cares, but it just feels like she’s saying it because she’s tired of me being there SO often. I know she still wants to be friends, but maybe she wants to be friends that just check in once a week or once a month. Or maybe she wants to be friends that don’t share hurts or fears. Maybe she wants to be friends that just see the life events on Facebook and don’t really speak. I don’t know. I don’t know WHAT she’s thinking. I’ve asked several times, but I feel like she just says she’s fine and we leave it at that. But I want to know what she thinks about all of this. About me. And she’s not sharing that with me.
I decided this week to just take a step back. Stop crowding her and blowing up her phone with pointless messages. I started this blog on Monday, and it’s now Wednesday. We didn’t speak at all Monday. Yesterday she messaged at night right before I went to sleep. It was nice to hear from her, though. She did say she’s been busy, and I know that’s true. I just also know that that’s how relationships die. We stop making time for each other and communication dwindles down to nothing and before we know it, we’re perfect strangers. I know that this is happening. It’s come to that point. I messed things up when I told her how I felt. And now her life is changing and so is mine and it just won’t be the same anymore. I haven’t really cried over this or anything – I’ve kind of just blocked it out. But as I type it, it’s becoming more real and my heart is really hurting. I’m devastated. I’m heartbroken. I miss my friend.
I do feel like I’m the one causing the break in our friendship here. I’m choosing not to reach out because I know she’s busy and she doesn’t really have time for me anymore. I’m also keeping a distance because I feel like I’ve made things weird by sharing my attachment to her. I just wish I wouldn’t have started feeling this way again. I hate that I cause myself all of this pain because I can’t just keep to myself. Because I’ve been through the attachment breaks before, I know how this will play out.
It’s going to hurt for a few days, maybe a couple weeks. I’m still kind of in the shocked stage right now, but it will hit hard when things calm down. In the meantime, I’m going to go to therapy and hold tight to that relationship because it’s safe. I’m going to keep myself occupied on other tasks, so I don’t think about Cat and weight of the attachment break doesn’t tear me apart completely. As the days go by, the loss of communication and the distance will get easier. I do think, though, that this one will be a little bit different. I will always miss Cat and the connection we had. I will always miss our talks of coffee and school and kids and life. I’ll miss the silly selfies and the late-night FaceTime sessions and the laughs.
This was a friendship that I really cherished and I’m sad that it’s come to this. I’m sad that once again, I got too involved and it blew up in my face. I’m so thankful that I have a therapy session tomorrow. This constant anxiety and holding down the emotions is making me feel like I can’t breathe. I broke out in stress hives about a week ago and they’re getting worse. They’re very inflamed today, despite taking Benadryl and putting hydrocortisone cream on them. I know it will be okay though.
In time, my heart will heal, and this relationship will be a fond memory. I do, and always will, love Cat. She was so much better to me than I could have ever deserved. I’m really happy that I got to be her friend, even if for a short period of time. Anyone that gets to call her friend, is a truly lucky human being and I hope they don’t take it for granted.
I’m feeling long-winded and I need to start packing up my things, so I’m going to call this quits. But, how ironic that I’m saying goodbye to a home that Cat helped me get out of, and I’m saying goodbye to her at the same time. This weekend is going to be a huge change. I just hope I don’t regret it.
Thank you all for reading and sticking around through my embarrassing admissions of my stupid feelings. You’re all so kind to be here.
My love to you all,
Poppy
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