detachment

night before last, on the first day of the new year, i began reading about attachment theory. i'd heard a lot about it from friends but didn't know and still do not know much about it. i know i have historically had an insecure attachment style, but is it anxious? avoidant? i hadn't read enough to know more than the surface level. but it comes to mind now because of what i've experienced for much of my life and what has recently intensified: a strong detachment from the desire to exist in this world, in this moment, in many moments, for stretches of time, as me.

i’ve written about it before, the feeling of wanting to disappear. since then, i've learned more about this combination of passive suicidality and hopelessness. i've been in therapy every week for over three years now. every week. and last year i started to really feel the effects of my weekly work, of my bravery, of my commitment. no matter how competent your therapist, how open you are to the ongoing recovery process, and how good a match you two may be, there's a big difference between going to therapy once a month or once every few months and going to therapy once a week. previously, i used therapy to dampen the big fires in my life at that time, going four to maybe twelve times a year. not really getting to the gristle, let alone the meat or fat. we barely cut the skin. currently, i continue the deep and painful work of identifying, discussing, and unpacking the core wounds that lie beneath all of the fires, whether i connect the dots at the time or not.

a sound became popular on tik tok in 2022, "is it me? am i the drama?" and yes, it is me. i am the drama. things happen to me that are outside of my control but i have been my own biggest obstacle to living a life of joy, pleasure, contentment, and satisfaction. i'm a wonderful human and i'm also my own obstruction.

if 2022 taught me anything, it's that i am easily triggered. which, at my big age, is not the fault of anyone, including me. it is my responsibility to respond to those triggers in a healthy manner, but doing so without many models is difficult. for a number of reasons from intergenerational trauma to childhood trauma to relocation to relationship trauma to occupational trauma to self-censorship to biology to capitalism to personal injury to disability to systems of oppression to the way a teacher treated me in adolescence to whatever, seemingly little and inconsequential things that people say or do throw some part of my mind-body back into previous trauma.

i'll think i'm present. i'll think i'm responding to the person. i'll think i'm responding to what they said or did, how they looked or felt to me. and i am, right? but that's just a piece of it. more than anything, i'm responding from a place of hurt, a place of previous trauma that had nothing to do with my present. nothing to do with what is real in the here and now. nothing to do with the person whose actions or combination of syllables in a particular order or tone of voice or raised eyebrow triggered my fight/flight/fawn/freeze response. and what do you do with that? more accurately, what do i do with that? someone triggers me and suddenly i'm like raven baxter, but instead of a vision of the future, i hyperfixate on a vision of the past that shapes how i respond in the present without me even catching it.

what do i do when my unconscious guides my response and i only realize it later? what happens when the anger that burns inside me, the tension i hold without release until i fall asleep, the fear that lingers even during REM drives how i respond to the world? when it molds who i trust and in what instances (most) i don't trust? it makes sense that i have spent so much of my life intellectualizing my feelings instead of actually feeling them, i learned very early in my life to detach from my emotional response to the world i inhabit. i became habituated to detaching myself from the desire to live because it was easier than existing as a walking nerve ending.

I’ve always been sensitive. i once cried because a cookie i had broke in half. and no, i wasn't a baby, i was probably five. i once cried when a teacher put her chin in the paper fortune teller we created in preschool. why? i'm not sure, maybe i didn't like her chin. maybe i was sad that i couldn't do it myself? but the thing is, i felt my feelings, i cried. but as i got older i learned to disguise my sensitivity by suppressing or numbing my emotional response, often very poorly. now that therapy and life and pain and loss and grief and anger and sorrow and joy and pleasure and peace and noise and success and failure feel so much more real and present in my body, what do i do? now that i've reestablished my connection to my inner child, now that the self-help books have set in, now that the years of painful therapeutic work have set in, now that the self-reflection has led to less self-flagellation and more generosity toward self, less self-harm and more accountability, less punishment and more discomfort but greater presence, what do i do?

i live. white women might have been onto something with the live, laugh, love trifecta. right now i live but just barely sometimes. i laugh but take so much seriously even when it's clear most people choose no to and are better for it. i love but if you get to close i push you away or if you give me love i feel like i don't deserve, i struggle. practicing detachment has not kept me safe. from my feelings, from people, from decisions, from material conditions. well, detachment kept younger me safe. it helped younger me get through some very internally and sometimes externally dangerous and turbulent times. it helped get me to where i am today. so let's say that detachment will no longer keep me safe. safety is a fallacy. protection only goes so far. so what happens when i actually accept attachment? secure attachment. attachment that recognizes the interconnected and inextricably interdependent ways we have to live in order to not just survive but thrive.

detachment has felt comfortable and familiar. attachment feels risky, scary, uncomfortable, unfamiliar, and fuckin dangerous. but i'm  surrendering. i'm going to admit to myself that i need so much more. i want so much more. i'm allowed to have needs and wants and wishes. and i deserve that. I’ve been through enough. i've put myself through enough. it's time. it's time to get out of my own way, lovingly.