Epiphany 2020

I’m not really sure what led to this realization, but since I gave up seeing this particular therapist, I’ve had an epiphany.  For years, I’ve wondered why I chose men who needed me to provide for them, and why I stayed with men I didn’t love.

I do believe that part of it was that I have always been afraid of letting people down.  This began when my brother was born to our single mother when I was but three and a half years old.  She suffered with postpartum depression, so when she wasn’t taking care of my infant brother, she was napping.  Where I had once been the center of her universe, suddenly, I was just one more thing to her.

I’ve told this story here before, but apparently, I went to my mom and asked her why she didn’t love me anymore.  Imagine a three and a half year old cutie (cuz I was adorable) asking you why you don’t love her!   My mom explained to me that Ed was a helpless baby, and that if we didn’t take care of him, he could die.  From that moment, I became the consummate helper.  I would run to get her a diaper or a cloth.  She would lavish me with praise.  “Oh, Jenna, you’re Mama’s big girl!”

As more kids came along, I learned to fall all over myself to get my mom to tell me that I was a good girl.  I learned to be independent.  I learned to excel, to be outgoing, to be among the best at everything.  I got good grades, I won competitions for writing and drawing.  I would do just about anything to have someone tell me I was a good girl.  Praise = Love.

It was attention that I was seeking.  That’s the epiphany.  I associated attention with love, and having only my mother and siblings, I got very little attention at home.  Even when I had plays or concerts or parades, Mom didn’t come.  I was shocked that she came to my 8th grade graduation.

This is not a criticism of my mom.  She was doing the best she could given her own unfortunate circumstances.   This is about me, and figuring out my baggage.

My first boyfriend was like a drug, to me.  He gave me just enough attention to keep me hooked, but not a drop more.  I was in 8th/9th grade, and it took him a year to hold my hand for the first time.   We were together for a year and a half before he broke my heart.  He dumped me without a reason, and did so in an icy way.

Now I can look back and see how I smothered him.  I always wanted to be touching him.  At school, he had no time to himself.  I even switched my schedule around so that he and I could be in the same classes.

I didn’t learn about smothering until I got my next boyfriend.   He pressured me to do things I wasn’t ready for.  When I told him that, he cried.  You might think it’s sweet that he cried because he felt bad for pressuring me.  I did.  But after it happened a few times, I realized that it was a form of manipulation.

I broke up with him.  My mom cried.  She liked him and was sad that he wouldn’t be around anymore.  So I got back together with him and was with him for a total of 18 months, wrestling to keep his hands and mouth off of my breasts and out of my pants.

To be fair, if I had told my mom these things, she would totally have been on my side.  But this is an example of how important it was to me to not disappoint people.

Not disappointing people was an extension of believing that I needed to earn love.

You can read about all my other miserable relationships in the following few entries.😉