Tuesday, September 1, 2009

Anchors and Abandonment

An anchor is used to stabilize a ship in the midst
of rocky conditions at sea,  like a storm.   It is also dropped down so the vessel has a place to land,  so it can be located and not drift.

My entry into the world as an infant given up for adoption meant that I didn't have the anchor of bonding to my mother.  The breast to turn to and suckle helps the baby locate the source of its nutrients.  Babies have other anchors in this formative time:  a parent's face;  a blanket or favorite toy;   a mobile above the crib.    I am not aware of any of these things.  It has only been in this past year that I've mustered up the courage to visit this experience of "no-placeness" -- a tiny ship adrift.



I was brought into a strange home and now have faces to anchor to.   As I get older,  I wonder why these faces don't look like me.    I am told that I am adopted and then I get an answer to the question and I am left with a hundred more questions and I am out to sea again.    The two adults who I try to locate myself with are often not locatable.   My father is anchored to a recliner chair,  cuddling bottles of beer every night.   My mother is constantly in motion trying to manage the chaos.   My anchors as a young girl become things that are not human,  yet are consistent and can help me feel located.   The moon was a very important anchor and to this very day,  is an old friend.  The stars and the sun were also anchors -- I could count on them except on rainy, cloudy days.  

When I reached school age,   I latched onto teachers and didn't want to let go.   They were the first humans,  besides my grandmother,  who provided a sense of stability.   In my early adolescence,  I latched onto friends.   I shape-shifted to become anything they wanted me to be because I feared losing them.  Sometimes I bought their friendships by giving them small gifts or cards with money I made from paper routes or selling cards door-to-door. 

In later adolescence,  I created stories and drama as a way of holding onto friends -- to gain their sympathy and pity.   In 10th grade,   I would go to the basement of my home and hit my legs repeatedly with a hammer.   I would limp after doing this and pretend that I had some kind of health condition that caused the bruising.   Conversely,  I would bust my ass practicing over and over and over how to jump high enough to reach the top of field hockey cage so I could be an unstoppable goalie and win the adolations of peers.    I recently learned from my kabbalistic healer that during this time period,   it wasn't safe to have stillness.   This was the place of my abandonment.   Therefore,  I needed to either be in a place of nega (acting out)  or oneg (excelling)  in order to gain attention from others and not feel abandonment.

At age 15,  I had my first alcoholic drink.   An experimental Tom Collins made in the basement of my friend's parents home,  using a cocktail book recipe and whatever we could find in their bar.  I made regular trips to this friend's home to get a taste of the potion that made me feel everything and nothing.  For the next 13 years,   I would set sail into the high seas of alcohol,   anchorless, trying to drown out any whiff I had of potential danger and inevitable abandonment. 

As I got sober,  I anchored myself to a therapist and a group.   And directly from there,  I latched onto a 13 and a half year relationship.   In this relationship,  the same forms of abandonment from my childhood were replicated.   As a couple,  we told ourselves a lie about our relationship.  We pretended that it was good and loving and real.   She numbed herself through a variety of substances and I busied myself in work,  exercise,  recreational activities,  over-extending myself to friends,  graduate school and mindless TV.  We constantly looked for external distractions to take the focus off of the relationship:  snorkeling trips and cruises,  acquiring dogs,  even attempting to have a child.   I essentially married my father and became my mother.   Neither of us could be located and we held onto the relationship out of shear terror of experiencing abandonment. In the last 2 years of the relationship,  I lived in a separate bedroom.   This became my refuge -  a room filled with self-help books and altars,  a place where I could temporarily drop an anchor amid the alcoholic chaos of the home shared with my partner.     And I had portable anchors,  like the crystals and stones I carried in my pocket faithfully and could hold onto and feel their healing properties to carry me through my day.  There were also the pennies left for me by my partners'  deceased parents.  I began to find these after they died and they were my anchors to the Universe,  the other side -- so I could feel a force watching over me,  ensuring I was being taken care of.   I realize now that this was a way for me to survive the abandonment in my partnership. 

My decision to leave that relationship was met with the full fury of my partner's rage.  I'm aware  it was the terror of her own issues of abandonment aimed at me.  I was thrusted instantly into no-placeness.   I stood at the top of my street,  one bag packed,  and a cell phone and my wallet.  I called a good friend and then my mother while I waited to be picked up.  I eventually got my car and my books and a few other possessions that were meaningful to me and one of the two dogs we parented.   I dropped an anchor for awhile in the room of my good friend's house so I could stablize myself from the storm of my life  yet it never felt like a true home;  I knew it was time to make the big move,   completely on my own.    I needed to experience my aloneness in the world,  from a place of wanting to feel it, be awake to it  -- to not numb myself or lose myself or busy myself.   I chose not to have a TV for this reason and to this day,  I still don't own one. 

Sitting with aloneness over the past few years has been my greatest challenge and my deepest healing.  I've come to understand that bearing the feelings of no-placeness and abandonment have to be experienced without anchoring onto anyone or anything but myself.    This has been no easy feat.   It has been accomplished through a willingness to ride rough waves,  to endure personal terror and painful feelings,   and to share these experiences  with people I trust and am willing to be intimate with.  It has required me to not attempt to save or rescue or complete myself by anchoring to another.   It is about a relationship with myself so I know who I am when I am with others and they can be and know who they are  when they're with me.    I know where I begin and end.   The other knows where they begin and end.   And we make a choice to meet and come together from these individual places.   

Today, I am the anchor.

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