Independent- this adjective is something that has often been attributed with who I am. I tend to be one who lives life with no fear, I go out on my own, visiting new cities with ease. Exploring etc. I have lived on my own since I was 18 years old, I have had no problem with having a job and paying my bills and making ends meet. I generally don't ask for much from people around me and I can generally handle most of the things that come my way.
But I wonder if this word, is less something that defines me and more something that CONFINES me. I have been pondering this thought for quite some time, especially recently with major things that have happened in my life. I am a giver by nature, one who easily puts the needs of others ahead of my own. I think that passion to give compliments my independence. But in most ways I think it can also be a barrier. Why?
I have a hard time allowing myself to spend time dealing with the things that can get at me deep. I like to be moving on to the next thing, taking on these different opportunities to avoid having to deal with the undercurrent of my experiences. Example, my mother recently had a stroke (she is doing well, back home and walking and talking) but I gave myself a day. A DAY! A Day to "deal" with it, but I didn't actually deal with it. I just go through the motions of "business" and act as if it didn't phase me. It took a breakdown two days later for me to realize that I have a horrible habit of doing this often. And there at the heart of it is the problem,
I am afraid of the break down, I am and have been afraid of letting myself fall apart because in the independence it also means, I don't necessarily allow others to take care of me. I build some space because it is easier for me to take care of others than it is for me to let others take care of me. I don't allow people to get close enough to the breaking point of me. I don't want to get there because for me breaking point is my mother, who for most of my time living with her in high school after my parents divorce dealt with a serious episode of depression. Where me being 13, 14, 15 years old didn't have the tools, context or understanding to know what that meant. But only knew enough of having to wake her up and drag her out of bed in the morning so that I could go to school.
Breaking down meant having to speak out about shame that I have inadvertently carried because of my parents' divorce and the actions my parents took that had a great impact on me and my brother. Breaking down means falling a part and that scares me because who will put me back together. Or who will be around for comfort when I need it most.
There are extremes to this definition, "Free from outside control" means that I have the ability to control, my emotions, what i let bother me. But then there is so much energy that goes uncontrolled? What happens to the emotions that I don't allow myself to feel or those moments that I don't allow to be processed. They don't just go away.
The other layer to this is what is lost? Is depending on someone else a bad thing? Where is the middle to be able to balance a little bit of freedom with the need for people to care for you. What's at risk when you don't let people in all the way. The funny thing is I think I do, but when I need to have my moment of weakness it is timed, it is controlled it is within an experiment almost, like I allow myself to only have the few moments.
The other part of who I am is that I actually am an emotional person. If you have been reading any of my other posts you will see the testament of that. But I always have this block when it comes to the things that can break me the deepest. I learned that young through my parents' divorce and I don't think I truly understood the impact of it until now. There was shame in my parents' divorce. Not many kids from where I grew up had experienced divorce, so there was fear in being the first one. And then you add to it the display that became their divorce, it was painful.
So I think I allowed this pride of being independent as an excuse to put walls up around me that I am now coming to reality with. Being independent in some aspects means that I don't actually have to give all of myself fully because it means that I have to get more raw, more vulnerable to open wounds that clearly are not healed.
So where do I go from here?
