When There Is Too Much Love

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

Since childhood, my mother beat and humiliated me. From her moral suppression, from her loud words spoken with anger, irritation, deep wounds remained in my heart, which I wanted to lick with someone or something … There was no question of love. Whatever I did, my mother was always unhappy with me, her criticism knew no boundaries, her condemnation became the basis of my whole life. More precisely, the basis was that I must be good, no matter what, break into a cake to be loved. And this meant that I should have given up my desires, from my feelings, which I wanted to shout about, and not push deep into my soul. It meant giving up your life and living for another person. Sometimes it became unbearable. At the age of 18, I ran away from her to a man, from whom I became pregnant almost immediately. I wanted to show her that I am an adult, that I can, that I can cope, but every month and year my life turned into some incomprehensible kaleidoscope of events, from which my head was spinning. It didn't work out with the man, and I began to raise my son alone. Barely making ends meet, I experienced a lot of stress.

The idea that I need to improve my personal life has flooded all around. She became some kind of obsessed with the idea that I could not be alone, that this oppressive loneliness was intolerable to me. A few months later I met HIM. I didn't care that we live on my money, but he did not work, that I had to serve him, clean, cook, run from work to kindergarten in order to have time to pick up not only my son, but also his son, who began to live together with us. There was a lack of money even more, but the man with whom I lived did not think of getting a job. It suited me, I was ready to give him my last money for cigarettes and entertainment, denying myself clothes and cosmetics, and depriving children of fruits, toys or sweets. It seemed to me that if he is with me, it means that he loves me, the way I am, I didn’t care that I had to sacrifice the interests of children, but before I somehow didn’t realize this. Friends told me that I was a bad mother, to which I raised my eyebrows in surprise and asked: “Why?”. The main thing for me was to fill the huge gap that remained after my mother, to fill it with the love of another person, and in order to deserve it, I gave everything to him, all of myself to the last drop. She sacrificed everything: her only child, her needs, her time, her life …

And then I came to therapy … The thoughts that I described before were also partly the experience that I received at these warm and confidential meetings. The first and most important thing I should have done was to understand that I would never get my mother's love from any other person, and that another person would not be able to heal me from my childhood traumas. It was painful. Bitterly. It's a shame. Sometimes it's unbearable. I wanted to run again under the wing of a man and ask, demand this love, doing everything for him. I wanted to give up everything and return to my life, whatever it was. But, gradually living these painful feelings, I became more mature. Among the smoke of this painful dependence on a man, the features of my so far unstable boundaries began to appear. There was “I” and there was “he”, there was a place for my needs and desires, I no longer looked back into the past, but learned to take responsibility for my life. I should have become a parent to myself in order to give love, support, learn to take care of myself. All these years my inner child asked for help, support, affection and love, but I cut off part of this life from myself. It took a lot of will and strength to relive my childhood anew, to let go of these experiences, which I carried not only in my relationships that were destroying me, but in general throughout my life. It was as if the blinders had fallen from my eyes, and this was replaced by relief and the realization that there is some other path along which I can further build my life. And this is a path not only of self-love, it is a path towards constructive relationships, where there is mutual understanding, warmth and love.

My self-esteem, which was destroyed for many years from self-torture, humiliation, indifference, began to slowly, but already with some confidence, grow up. I was no longer that "errand girl" who had to give every last drop to establish herself in my importance in order to become noticeable to my man, who did what he was lying on the couch. I no longer really wanted to follow the expectations of other people, to spend energy on holding on to the illusory nature of relationships that gave me nothing but suffering. I looked with different eyes at my child, who needed a mother, affectionate, attentive, loving. By nourishing my inner child with love, I was able to give this love to him, breaking this vicious circle of dislike in childhood. The oppressive feeling that I need a man to fill my inner void is gone.

Not me, an adult, needed the love and tenderness that I asked and demanded from my man, but my inner child. All these years he asked, shouted about her, but I did not pay attention to him. Somewhere I was ashamed of my childhood, somewhere it was so painful that I wanted to forget it like a bad dream … But during therapy I realized that it is impossible to let go of something painful from your life until you live it, you are not aware of every cell of my body this reality that life has pushed me against.