Dipping From Someone Else's Well
2007-01-04, 16:14

Happy New Year.

I've been coming to realize lately - just a few minutes ago, actually - that I've been relying too much on others for my own personal stability. I've vested my emotional future to a dangerous degree into my wife and kids.

That sounds wrong, because it sounds like emotional investment in your loved ones is bad, which it isn't. Far from it; by definition it's a necessity. I think my problem is that I've come to rely on these sources as a replacement for my contentment with myself. I think that's why I take it so personally when my wife gets angry with me for something stupid I've done or Laurana has a bad night or a tantrum. When that happens, suddenly I feel as though care and empathy have been cut off, that the very concept of Love is suddenly denied me.

I would call it a lack of trust that the situation is temporary (which it is) that causes me to feel that way, like a baby who thinks their parents have disappeared when they're out of eyeshot, but that's not it, not the case at all. I know that. But the feeling still appears nonetheless, the feeling that I've ruined thins, that the source of love I've been drawing from is gone.

I know that this problem is tied somehow to my empathetic nature, my sensitivity to how people around me are feeling. What I don't know is whether the empathy causes the need or the effect of drawing my support from elsewhere, or whether my need to draw from elsewhere results in my being empathetic to those around me.

That feeling of empathy had never been so strong as when I attended a funeral of one of H's relatives a number of years ago, one of the very few funerals I've attended and the first since I was of school age. The casket felt cold at a distance, and the absence of life there was distractingly obvious, a gaping hole in the room. It seemed like I could feel everyone there pouring thoughts and emotions into that hole, trying to fill it up again. No wonder people find funerals exhausting. But I digress.

I have a suspicion that this over reliance on others for emotional continuity is because I'm compensating for my lack of self-support. I feel like I'm losing the ability to maintain myself in a way that keeps me afloat on my own. By saying that I make it sound like I was doing just fine before I got into a committed relationship, which really isn't the case. When I met H, I found a wellspring from which I could draw, and at some point I think that I started drawing more than my share, to fill the hole inside me. I would say that it's like the funeral, that I'm in some way dead inside, but I know that's not the case. There's a lack of internal strength because something inside... sleeps, is asleep. Will it ever wake up? Can it? I don't know. I do know that I need to try to awaken it, though, because I can't use others as life support indefinitely, not without turning merely into a leech to be torn away or burned off.

You may have noticed that this is not the follow up to last post, as promised. C'est la vie. I never make time to post on the weekend, and the last few days have been brain-muddled from lack of proper sleep, partly because of the baby and partly from sleeping in too much on the long weekend. I'm not liking this Post Every Thursday thing that's happening, but it's too soon to call it a proper trend, I suppose.

New Year's was pleasantly calm, and I'm hoping the rest of our year - and yours - follows suit. Cheers.

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