5:40 p.m. - 11/02/02
-when you really don't want me to::=
I've just started e-mailing with this woman from sf who's really marvelous, but I'm feeling crazy now. Scared and codependent. I felt fine so long as I was talking to her about her own life, but now she's asked about me and I'm fairly terrified. It has me thinking about my way of responding to people in a new light. I've noticed at the board, I tend to say a lot about my own experience with something, and sometimes I wonder if that's appropriate, but I realize now it's a good way to balance wanting to put the emphasis on them (compulsively) into wanting to help them while maintaining my own identity.
I'm scared to tell her who I am, and I'm also scared not to. She's newer to recovery than I am, and I'm scared to be the one who doesn't set any boundaries again. I know I can do this. I am a new person, and she is a new person, and I do not have to repeat my past experiences, but I'm still scared that I will. I'm supposed to be hanging around sf for myself, for my own relation/communication/expression needs, and I can't get too focused on someone else. Not wanting to talk about myself was a big red flag with that. I don't want her to know about me because I might scare her off, and then I won't have the connection. It's a shame thing, partly, and a codependent thing. It is also largely a learned fear.
I've been thinking about Billy. I don't even want to think about him right now- it makes the pain worse- but I've been thinking about him all the same. I've been thinking about how I promised myself I wouldn't lose track of how close we had been after we were over, and how I did anyway. I've been thinking about how my connection to him is so largely undefined, how it's hard to remember, and wondering if there's really any difference between him and Jenna. I really want there to be a difference, but I wonder if there is. If not, maybe I can make there be one, with our futures; maybe it's simply the past with Jenna that is common. Of course, that means *pursuing* some sort of future with her, and I have yet to determine where she's even located right now. But anyway.
I'm scared to tell this woman about myself and more than anything else, I'm scared to tell her my age. I leave it off my profile on sf, and I almost never initiate that point of conversation. I'm terrified to lose a relationship based on it. I'm terrified that people will view me differently knowing I'm only seventeen, will be less likely to care for me, and yes, will be less likely to confide in me. I guess this is how it becomes a codependent fear. I'm scared they will feel uncomfortable being "taken care of" even slightly by someone 5, 10, 20 years younger than they, and will thus quit listening to me, or quit coming to me. I'm scared that my age is something I can't share.
It's odd because obviously this is what Billy thought broke our relationship: my inability to accept his age. I maintained that it was his inability to share it with me early on, and my own inability to merge my perception of him all along with my perception of him after I'd been told. There was one line in his last post about me that said I had compared him to Andy Sipowitz of NYPD Blue; it really pissed me off (still does) because my only reference to that character was from a dream and had nothing to do with him, but I see now how in some ways it was still true. I believe that I lost the ability to have a relationship with him because I felt betrayed by him, but I also thought of him differently after knowing his age. I compared him to people that age, such as my father, people that I was being hurt by, toward whom I felt resentment. I tried to differentiate between him and my dad but couldn't do so. That wasn't the reason we ended (there were so many reasons, so many hurts) but it had an effect, no doubt. I was devastated, angry at my father's helpless pain, his inability to take care of himself, the neediness that required I take care of him instead of the vice-versa relationship I needed so desperately. The idea that I had at times, (of my own volition...), taken care of Billy stirred my stomach angrily. Here was another middle-aged man who I should not have been responsible for. Somehow, I couldn't fit into my perception that here was My Billy, the Billy I had cared for all along.
I know he said he hadn't changed but somehow he had. In my perception. Somehow there was a difference between him when I felt he had withheld that from me. There was a difference also based on what fifty connotated for me. I told him the age had nothing to do with it, but that's not something I can know. I can't know if I would have felt for him the way I did had he told me early on that we were not contemporaries. I can know that we would not have broken so brutally over the fact if I had known early on. I can know that my love for him stretched beyond his age, and had I known that of him, I may have had different feelings, but I would not have felt nothing. I doubt I would have felt less.
I wonder now if I took responsibility for the gap, too. If I thought it was not so much his age, but my youth, that caused the problem. Why am I so terrified to share my age? Why do I constantly wish that people will guess I'm older than I am, even though I appear about twelve? And why do I then grow irritated or afraid when someone refers to me online in a way that I *know* means they think I am older than I am? (Teenagers don't call other teenagers "lady"...) I'm afraid to be cast out by those I honestly relate to (peers of ages other than my own) based on my young-ness. I am also afraid to bear the responsibility of someone older than myself. I'm afraid to be asked to take care of someone who is older than me, and I'm desperate to have that option. I guess ultimately, I don't want to tell my age to this woman (or anyone else) because I want the opportunity to caretake outside my age bracket. Yes, I have experienced ageism; yes, I have been patronized, belittled, undermined. But honestly, I'm not worried that I won't be able to have intellectual conversation with her, or be able to talk about our mutual experiences following the disclosure. I'm worried that she won't look at me as someone she can confide in...and then...what if she does?
If I don't tell her my age, and more directly, if I don't set boundaries about what I can and cannot be in this relationship, I risk being pulled back into the role of caretaker, which is *not* one I enjoy. Yes, I worry when I cannot fix everything for everyone, but truthfully I don't think I want to be the one to fix it. I get real joy out of helping others, and I (unhealthily) have a sense of identity staked in that service. However, trying to "fix" things for people, trying to "save" people, trying to "change" their pain, is not something that will bring me joy. I forget that- because I'm in such pain over the negative light of their experience. I think changing the experience will help me feel better. I forget that I will end up feeling drained, ignored, and used. I forget that every time I help someone with even the partial intention of "and they will express gratitude to me" I will not feel good afterward. The acknowledgement of a codependent caretaking act is *never* enough. The acknowledgment of a sincere act is icing. Can I really learn the difference just through practice?
I don't want to be the little girl who must be taken care of, but I don't want to be the strong adult who has no need of help. I don't want to be the girl who is abandoned, but I don't want to be the strong woman who does the abandoning. I need to be able to say, "I'm Mary; I'm seven, thirteen, seventeen, twenty, twenty-three, and older." I'm Mary. I have a young wisdom, a childhood brokenness, a preadolescent suspension, a young adult enthusiasm, a twentyish relational bias, and a slightly older experiential intellect. I'm Mary, and I've been through quite a bit, some of which has left me quite old, and some of which has left me quite young. I hope all of that will be ok with you.
Really, after all, psychiatric illness just seems to be exaggeration of the pure human reality. I don't have alters; I don't switch uncontrollably between people, and I don't have a horrible traumatic past I must survive through that...but...I do have several selves inside of me. I am growing up and growing down from several different points. I am working to integrate into one identity, and I'm terrified to be considered worthless for the flaws of any one of these "persons." I'm terrified to say, "I'm Seven" and have that mean "too young" instead of "so deserving of innocence." I'm terrified to say I'm seventeen and have it mean that the olders cannot have their peers. But then, even they do not deserve the weight of caretaking. Even they need to learn how to not be codependent.
Explain to me how you keep love from turning compulsive? When does the switch flip? Where is the alarm?
chord
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