Waxing Nostalgic

Orihime from Bleach

There are some things that I have always wondered why I have some deeply embedded beliefs. Some of them I haven’t the slightest idea of where they come from… like the thought that my life will be much shorter than most will be. And, more importantly, my brain has been putting together the pieces of why I have the belief that I will always be alone.

For the longest time, I had absolutely no idea where the thought came from. It was something that my brain latched on to and wouldn’t let go. At the time, I thought that maybe it was because I was a teenager. I was raped. And I was in a school that I didn’t want to go to and wasn’t happy with. It felt like I was you standard disaffected teenager in the nineties.

Unfortunately, the belief never went away after I changed schools, or even after I was no longer a teenager. It has been persistent throughout my life… and until recently, I didn’t understand where it came from.

The more that I have learned about my childhood, and the more that I’ve remembered, the more that I’ve been able to untangle some pretty bad behavior that I’ve developed as a coping mechanisms. Trying to unlearn things that have kept you alive for so many years is hard… not impossible, but incredibly hard. Especially as so much of it has become such a fundamental part of one’s self. It’s something that I’ve been striving to do… to make myself a better version of myself.

So, how did the belief that I will always be lonely come to pass?

Well, this was such an incredibly easy thing to untangle… and I think to a certain degree, I’ve always known. The belief that I will always be alone stems from the fact that I largely have been. My mom checked out when I was pretty young. My dad was never really around because of his work schedule. The love that I was supposed to see when I was younger, never was really there. So, I’m guessing that had a huge effect on my belief of if I deserve to be loved and have people/family in my life.

I don’t remember my mom being around all that much. And, I think, to a certain degree, I think somewhere in my subconscious, I was aware of what my mom was trying to do. My mom didn’t even think that it was worth it to stop me from being beaten for something that I never did or being unduly punished for being a child. My dad was as equally there. I didn’t have the emotional nourishment that I needed as a child. I was alone in the world as a kid, so why would that change as an adult?

Well, one thing that I’ve been learning as I get older and having different, more wonderful people come into my life, is that maybe the belief that I deserve to be alone might actually be wrong. I don’t know if I’ve started getting comfortable with this. This is largely because my brain keeps going back to the old familiar feeling… because it’s familiar.

How does one undo something that’s such a fundamental part of oneself?

I honestly don’t know. That’s what I’m trying to figure out. It’s possible that positive reinforcement and psychological conditioning can help with this. And, maybe that’s just what I need. We’ll see. There’s only one way to find out.