Trauma

It’s hard to wait in uncertainty…

Those almost accidental words of mine in a Skype chat brought the realization of my trauma and how it manifests in my life. Anxiety, fear that the person won’t show up, and here I am waiting, devoted, like Hachiko. So I’m not needed, abandoned, alone.

It’s hard to wait for someone without a clear understanding of when they will come. It’s hard to feel unimportant, not involved in the life of that — suddenly so significant — Other, who betrayed me and preferred something more important and more interesting.

That’s how in childhood I waited for my mom to come home from work when she was late. That’s how I lay in my room, falling asleep and listening to the sounds of the TV that my parents watched behind the wall, and I was apart from them, outside the frame of that interest. That’s how I began and, in tension, developed my previous relationships. That’s how I wait now for people who were supposed to appear at the appointed time, but they are not there and they don’t warn me. That’s how I avoid showing initiative, afraid of being uninteresting, and thus, again, alone.

That’s apparently how I first felt at two months of age, lying at night in a hospital ward, with a fever, but without my mother. In my own eyes — unnecessary, in my own eyes — betrayed, in my own eyes — alone…

So I keep stopping my freedom and liveliness now, consumed by the thirst to feel needed, loved, the most important for someone.