them lament of a wounded soul…

what is it about love and everything that has to do with it, that we human beings are addicted to?

is it the avoidance of the essence of “no man is an island?”

is it the endorphins?

is it because we are qualified as a complete entity only when we love and are loved?

is it for all the reasons all the religions in the world teach each one of us?

is it our ultimate need?

is it our sole reason for existence?

or is it because they say love makes the world go ’round, and we fear that when we no longer love, the world will just stop?

as of the creation of this article, i may have gone through all the stages of this four-letter word: from when i was in first grade and was stolen a kiss from by a classmate named apolonio mendoza, up to this moment, this very moment, when i feel that all the meaning of love is lost to me.

crush, infatuation, adoration, admiration, ardour, attachment, affection, inclination, fixation, being in love, passion, lust and obssession. all these, i have felt.

i went through each possible emotion connected to all these words. i fell, was hurt, was ecstatic, was everything.  more often than not, though, i was more of hurt. but then again, just what is love without pain? what is ecstasy without anguish?

at times, i count all the times and all the ways i have abused love and been abused by it, and i weep, because i am so bad with numbers, and because it hurts my sensibilities that i allowed myself to be unwise about matters of the heart. a friend of mine once said, i should not be too careless about my heart because i only have one. i looked at him squarely, and told him that though i have only one pumping veined muscle in my chest, i have learned how to compartmentalize it so that i could allocate room for every single person who dares occupy it. i can’t remember if his nose bled, or his brain flatlined whilst listening to me.

but you know, i was wrong. i thought i was so smart that i could do what i said i could do. as it turned out, all of these people took up all the space, there was almost none left for me and for anyone else. what made it worse was the fact that after i allowed them access to my heart, they slammed the door at my face, leaving me outside wallowing in the rain. left with an immutable yearning to be permitted into MY heart. yet, i fear i have failed.

there are days, and the dreaded nights, when i would feel so lonely and desolated, with nothing in mind but to have someone with whom i can share my misery. someone who would want the same thing, to be with me just one night, when no strings exist, no promises will be made, no sweet words will be spoken. i would crave for the company of a stranger who will titillate my mind and my senses, a stranger who will be deeply known and intimate to me only for several hours, but is willing to go back to being a stranger again when the morning comes.

yes, i ask the gods for this, cry tears at times so that they would hear me. BUT, when they do listen to me, and grant me my wish, give me an opportunity to share a night with a stranger, thunder would explode in my head waking me up from my stupor, bringing me back into my senses, reminding me of my Philophobia.

is this a withdrawal symptom from my addiction to love?

is my brain telling me that it has given up on my heart and will no longer support it?

or does it mean that i should really withdraw from it, just like my withdrawal from alcohol?

will the world stop?

plagiarized truth…

Fear of Intimacy - the wounded heart of codependency

“Fear of intimacy is at the heart of codependency.  We have a fear of intimacy because we have a fear of abandonment, betrayal, and rejection.  We have a these fears because we were wounded in early childhood - we experienced feeling emotionally abandoned, rejected, and betrayed by our parents because they were wounded.  They did not have healthy relationship with self - they were codependents who abandoned and betrayed themselves - and their behavior caused us to feel unworthy and unlovable.”"As children we were incapable of seeing ourselves as separate from our families - of knowing we had worth as individuals apart from our families.  The reality we grew up in was the only reality that we knew.  We thought our parents behavior reflected our worth - the same way that our codependent parents thought our behavior was a factor in rather they had worth.”

“The simplest and most understandable way I have ever heard intimacy described is by breaking the word down:
in to me see.  That is what intimacy is about - allowing another person to see into us, sharing who we are with another person.

Sharing who we are is a problem for codependents because at the core of our relationship with ourselves is the feeling that we are somehow defective, unlovable and unworthy - because of our childhood emotional trauma.  Codependency is rooted in our ego programming from early childhood.  That programming is a defense that the ego adapted to help us survive.  It is based upon the feeling that we are shameful, that we are defective, unworthy, and unlovable.  Our codependent defense system is an attempt to protect us from being rejected, betrayed, and abandoned because of our unworthy, shameful being.

We have a fear of intimacy because we were wounded, emotionally traumatized, in early childhood - felt rejected and abandoned - and then grew up in emotional dishonest societies that did not provide tools for healing, or healthy role models to teach us how to overcome that fear.  Our wounding in early childhood caused us to feel that something was wrong with our being - toxic shame - and our societal and parental role models taught us to keep up appearances, to hide our shamefulness from others.”

“As long as we are reacting unconsciously to our childhood emotional wounds and intellectual programming, we keep repeating the patterns.  We keep getting involved with unavailable people.  We keep setting ourselves up to be abandoned, betrayed and rejected.  We keep looking for love in all the wrong places, in all the wrong faces.  Is it any wonder we have a fear of intimacy?”

source: Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls by Robert Burney is copyright 1995