The core wound - I am not loveable and I don’t belong.
Memory - I am four or five years old and I’m crying out, “Nobody loves me and nobody cares!” At first, my family would laugh at the ridiculous (to them) drama of that. After I kept it up, they would ignore me until I gave up. I can see why it was ridiculous to them. Of course they loved me and I was surrounded by what would have been for them as children, unimaginable privilege.
But for whatever reason- some need or want denied - that’s how it FELT. I was telling them in the plainest language possible, “It feels like nobody loves me and nobody cares!”; the most terrible, overwhelming thing a child can feel. And basically I was met with, “Fuck your feelings.” Not all the time, but enough times that I had to develop strategies not to feel that, a myriad of ways not to be here and not to feel that.
And it spreads to more and more situations. “Nope, not gonna be here and feel that.” Not even the “good” things (like intimacy or joy) if they are too intense. I’ll feel this addiction or distraction instead. It robs me blind, but it’s not THAT, that shall not be named. We invent the savior we need, our own Personal Jesus and it works until it destroys us.
The pain came for me until I was forced to feel it. The pain came for me until I took the opportunity to feel and know that it was love in disguise all along, sent to heal me. I am loved, I do belong. Right here, right now. There is no need to be anywhere or anyone else.
There’s a bird singing one note insistently outside my window. I rise and stand in the cold fresh air of an open door and listen. I’m so glad I got to be here and know this before I died. It’s so still and peaceful inside.