Needing to be Needed
I really hate who I "am" as a "person".
In heavy quotations because I don't really feel like a proper "person" lately. I feel more like an amalgam of all of "my" worst feelings made manifest, and it's negatively affecting all of my relationships because I can't keep it contained.
And psychologically speaking that is what I am. I am a facet of a person who dissociated from their negative feelings that now I'm in charge of these emotions. I don't want to be in charge of these anymore! Spending an entire week crying and feeling unstable because I felt like I was going to be abandoned is terrifying! I keep having to ask for the most basic and silly things for reassurance and security from my friends and partner...and asking brings me to tears constantly. I just feel like a mess. I don't know what's wrong with me. And I still have to do normal work and interface with my family on top of this emotional turmoil.
I think growing up in a family that was not very compassionate towards my struggles has just made me, by default, feel inadequate or not worth paying attention to. I can't tell if it's because I've been masking for as long as I can remember or if it's because I learned to dissociate all of these bad feelings away from myself so I could be a child that didn't cause problems for my parents and siblings. I'm tired of being in relationships where I feel like I need to do something or be someone else to be worthy of love and affection. I don't know how to get rid of this feeling that everyone is ready to abandon me.
On top of this, I don't really even want new friendships or relationships... I like the amount of friends I have now, but I've just been specifically anxious about my relationship with my partner. I'm happy with the amount of friends I have now, but I feel like some of my "needs" aren't being met and I don't know how to identify what I'm missing. I'm losing sleep writing this post which isn't helping things.
I don't want to avoid my real-life responsibilities and obligations, though, so I've been keeping on top of that. In a way this is also satisfying my need to be needed. I have a graduate school interview on Tuesday that I need to nail. I also have a dental appointment I'm nervous about, several meetings, a car insurance appointment to make...the more I think about it, the more I just want everything to be put on pause for a day or two. Or maybe a week? That would be nice. I have to see if lazing around doing nothing is even an option for me tomorrow, though. Knowing my family, I won't, but I still hope it is.
I don't know what I should do for a "do nothing" day. I guess I should write a list so I know what I kind of want to do.
- Try to mess with "my" website on neocities because the CSS is bad (withholding the URL for anonymity).
- Do like an hour or two of that Coursera course I just started.
- Voice call with some friends.
- Exercise/go to the gym because I haven't been in a while. Or just lift weights at home.
- Read a new book. I've been working on one for a while now, but it's not really doing anything for me...?
- Clean out some files on my laptops so I can go into the work week fresh.
- Play a different video game than what I've been playing the last few weeks...?
- Watch a movie or a new show...? I've been watching the TV show Severance and I love it, but I saw an interesting thread on Twitter with some yuri anime....