I’ve been doing better emotionally over the past few months. I’ve attended more social events and even started doing a bit of running again. It feels good to be pulling myself out of the deep cavern of depression that I’ve been stuck in for the past couple of years. While I still have a long way to go I’m glad to be making some progress in the right direction.
The next major life change will be moving apartments as I have decided to move back to Capitol Hill early next year. After trying out a different neighborhood I realized I miss the energy of where I used to live and am looking forward to being back to what I consider “home”. It will also be an opportunity to find more ways to connect with the gay community which is vital for my social development.
It’s very exciting. But I’m also afraid.
The last time I was rich with social connections and events was three years ago. After so many years of solitude it felt incredible to be surrounded by so many friends. It felt like every day there was another event, party, dinner or occasion where I could socialize and feel a sense of belonging that I had never felt before.
And then everything changed.
The break-up of my romantic relationship shattered my trust in other people. I had put my full trust into someone who used me and then discarded me like an empty beer can. I felt like I had been a fool for letting people in just so that they could hurt me. I started distancing myself from my friends and withdrawing myself from socializing altogether.
The past few years have been rough to say the least. Every time I felt like I could let my guard down something else would happen that would trigger me and lead me to cutting myself off from other people. I started to wonder if I wasn’t better off alone after all.
After hitting my emotional low last year I’ve been slowly rebounding, but I’m definitely still not the same person I was back in 2022. In some ways that’s a good thing. I know that all of these experiences are learning opportunities for me, and as hard as these life lessons have been I know that they will make me stronger in the long run.
But I’m still afraid.
Moving back to Capitol Hill is scary for me because I know that I will have more opportunities to build more relationships, and my fear is that I’ll just wind up getting hurt again. And, as I told my therapist, a part of me is afraid to be happy again because I don’t want to experience the downfall that I felt three years ago after riding such an emotional high.
“I’m afraid to let other people in again,” I told her. I’m still afraid to let down my guard around people. I’m still convinced that other people don’t really like me anyway. And I still don’t understand why anyone would want to be around me.”
“If you surround yourself with healthy people then you won’t be as afraid,” she replied. “Your ex-boyfriend was not healthy, just like your parents were not healthy. Unhealthy people will seek you out and hurt you because they want you to fulfill only their needs and they have no desire to fulfill yours. But now you know this truth, and you will not be likely to blindly put your trust in another narcissist or abuser. You know when you are around good people, and you can trust yourself to know better than to trust someone who isn’t healthy like your ex was.”
I really want to believe this, but I also know that it’s still very difficult because I have such a strong tendency to seek out people that will hurt me.
“That’s because you are still trying to appease your parents,” my therapist added. “You failed to appease your parents, and so now you are trying to appease other people that are like them so that somehow you can win. But the reason you didn’t appease them was because they were two unfulfilled people who only saw you as a means of validating themselves. They never believed in themselves and so they could never believe in you. Your ex-boyfriend was very much like your parents. He put his own needs ahead of yours and then broke up with you when he had no more use for you. You were with him because you were trying to appease him, but because he was unfulfilled he couldn’t be appeased. But…if you surround yourself by healthy people you will never have this problem. Healthy people do not need you to validate them or fulfill them. They do not expect you to give them everything you have while giving nothing back in return. Stop repeating history by finding people like your parents to appease.”
I know that she is right. I do have such a strong tendency to seek out people who are narcissists and to dismiss people who seem to be kind to me for no obvious or apparent reason. I’m baffled if not a little suspicious of people who are unconditionally nice to me, yet if someone shows themselves to be self-involved or combative my instinct is to think, “I bet I could find a way to win them over.”
Part of the problem is that I keep normalizing what my parents did to me. Some of that is because I grew up in the center of it and so as a child I didn’t know any better that their treatment of me was not normal. But some of that is still self-blame, or thinking that somehow maybe they were right and I was actually the problem all along.
My therapist reminded me that my parents blamed me for the consequences of their abusive parenting. My parents put guilt trips on me whenever I got sick or needed medicine just because they were broke and had money issues and struggled to afford to pay for the care I needed. Even though I had talked to my therapist about this before I suddenly started to get emotional when recounting this to her again.
“You were severely abused,” she said. “You need to understand this. What was happening to you was not just wrong but it was severe. If any psychologist or social worker knew any of this was being done to you they would have removed you from the home immediately. If I was there I would have Child Protective Services on the phone and I would not let you go home to them. As a Mandated Reporter I wouldn’t even be able to let you go home with them as it would be a law violation. You need to understand how bad it really was and stop normalizing it. You were a victim of severe abuse, and no child should have to suffer like you did.”
And I’m literally sobbing as I just typed that last paragraph.
It is so hard to reconcile how abused I was because for me it was so “normal”. But I know it wasn’t. I’m a middle-aged man now and I still have deep emotional wounds that cause me to act and think in ways that I don’t understand or that don’t seem to make sense. I wouldn’t have these issues if it weren’t that bad.
The bigger issue is that if I normalize what happened in childhood then I will normalize that same type of behavior in adulthood. There was a night when my ex had gotten drunk and belligerent with me. Even though I told him the next day that I needed to have some space to work out my feelings about what had happened I still felt it was okay to eventually reconcile with him. But he was doing to me just what my parents had done. By normalizing my parent’s behavior I was also normalizing his behavior instead of recognizing it as a clear sign that he was an unhealthy person and that I should not tolerate that behavior from him or anyone else.
The sad thing is that it also makes me feel that non-abusive behavior is abnormal. It’s why I’m still baffled as to why people are friends with me for no apparent reason. It’s why I freeze like a deer in the headlights when a cute guy starts flirting with me. If he acted like a jerk then I’d be fine with it.
But I shouldn’t be fine with it. I shouldn’t accept it. I want not just to reject bad behavior but I want to absorb and believe in my healthy relationships. I want to believe that people really do like me and want to be friends with me, even though they have absolutely no agenda or ulterior motive. I want to believe that if a cute guy flirts with me that he is legitimately interested in me, and that he’s not doing so as a cruel joke at my expense.
If I can keep working on this then maybe it can help to alleviate my fears about moving back to Capitol Hill and continuing to build social connections and community. If I can trust myself to recognize healthy from unhealthy people then I can also trust that by doing so I stand less of a chance of being hurt. And if I can realize that building connections isn’t about opening myself up to being hurt but instead opening myself up to accepting healthy, positive energy from healthy, positive people then I will be well on my way to building a whole new sense of community. My hope is that I can get out of this mindset of trying to appease people who are abusive like my parents were and instead focus on inviting healthy people into my world so that I can stop being so afraid and start building more connections.
It’s time for me to stop repeating history.