There's a window of time during which this stuff can be quickly and relatively painlessly healed; the longer it sits untended, it festers, just like any wound.
But: I've been doing what I can to prevent that - talking to a friend, blogging. Unfortunately those are my only outlets right now. Lots of people say one should do distracting things like exercise and whatnot, but I actually read recently that this can be self-defeating: The drive to connect with other humans is a deep-seated, primal, visceral need, and cannot be substituted for. In other words, in my own short-hand, lots of things can distract from the pain of having no close, deep, loving, dependable human relationships in one's life, but nothing can really fill that need except the real thing.
Anything else is a form of emotional junk food - candy for the soul, like the Cokes I drink every day. I know exactly what they're for; I know exactly what need I'm trying to fill with their insubstantial fizziness (I can feel that hollow, aching emptiness inside me right now as I type, and I know the difference between 'hunger' for food and this kind of painful, never-satiated emotional hunger [though sometimes they do get mixed together]); but as I'm drinking them, for a brief moment, I feel full. Why Coke, of all things? Beats the heck out of me! I've tried analyzing it, to see if I could find healthier substitutes, but nothing works. I think part of it must be the same reason I chose Jack Daniels as my symbol of liberation from my mother's oppressive (and to me, irrational) thinking about alcohol: It's a rebellion against the 'right' way to do things, which in most cases means conforming to the parent's belief system, if they have one.
Having your parents' (or your culture's) beliefs jammed down your throat, of whatever variety, from religion to being a health-food nut, is just another kind of control-freakishness. In the long run kids will rebel, either openly or covertly, by becoming a raving drunk or a closet alcoholic; by becoming a a gourmet chef who can indulge her food cravings flagrantly, or a shamed and shameful bulimic who stuffs her face quietly in some corner, trying desperately to meet the basic human need of feeling wanted and loved.
But of course food cannot meet an emotional need, though certain foods can trigger similar biochemical responses in the body that temporarily assuage the pain, fear, or whatever other emotion is needing attention.
So for me, when the anxiety spins out of control to a level where I can't sleep, I go ahead and drink that shot of Jack Daniels and sleep like a frickin' baby. It works on so many levels, I can't even explain it - giving myself permission to go openly against the maternal 'no-no' and the Puritanical thinking that still infects our culture on so many levels is a huge part of it, I'm convinced.
And the same with the Coke: The combination of a jolt of sugar and caffeine trips all the dopamine/serotonin/whatever-they're-called 'pleasure' circuits so that I'm able to lift myself out of whatever funk I'm currently in, while at the same time thumbing my nose at the 'holier-than-thou' bullshit that says 'one must never taint that holy temple, the body, with any impure substances'.
Bullshit. Did I say bullshit? Let me just say it again: Bullshit. Since as far back as anybody knows about, human beings have been ingesting damn near anything they could lay their hands on just to see what happens. We are the ultimate experimenters. (Read The Omnivore's Dilemma sometime for some interesting thoughts about our propensity for variety and experimentation.) Think of George Burns, who lived to the ripe old age of 100 as a hard-drinkin', cigar-smokin' philanderer.
I personally think one's health and well-being has more to do with one's general ability to thumb one's nose at the universe, that combined with a certain amount of native (or hard-won) obstinacy. Or, as Terry Pratchett put it,
The universe, they said, depended for its operation on the balance of four forces which they identified as charm, persuasion, uncertainty and bloody-mindedness.Back to the topic at hand: In a healthy world, each human would have other humans to turn to in such times of need - not just the one single person that modern American life permits, namely the 'spouse' or 'boyfriend' or 'significant other' (bleh, hate that term, too - so touchy-feely, fakey new-Agey BS PC blech!)
Anyway. Ranting about outdated overly-politically correct terminology aside, I know exactly what I'm doing. And I believe that making my own choices about this, and doing it with conscious awareness of the compromises I'm making and the effects these compromises have on my mind and body helps keep me more clearly focused on what I actually need. I'm aware at all times that these are substitutes for the very real things I need, deep human needs that are going unmet on a daily, even hourly, basis, and that have been accumulating over the course of my lifetime. As such I'm aware that no one person, or most likely even a multiplicity of people, could meet these deep-seated needs unless they see it as a valuable thing to do, and choose to help me in this way.
Toward that end, I have one long-distance friend who's been helping me talk through some of these things, and has been trying very hard to provide the sort of 'witnessing' that Alice Miller talks about. It has its limits, because he's far away, and married, and otherwise only available on a fairly limited basis. But it gives me the sense that it is possible to have this kind of relationship, where one person actively tries to help another. Unlike the relationships I grew up with, which seem to be mostly a random crap shoot. (Here's a link to a list of Alice Miller books that I just came across.)
And if my brother were to read this, I want him to know that I appreciate his efforts in trying to bridge the gap in how we have (at least until recently?) differed in our thinking about how relationships can and should work. He seems to have been putting more effort into things lately - thinking more, recognizing the influence his actions do have on the other people in his life. Which to me seems like huge progress. Yay, brother!
But right now I'm sad because the progress that brother and I have been making with our relationship doesn't seem to extend to my relationship with the family, especially with respect to SIL. Which of course it wouldn't: They're separate people. I guess I'm still just a bit astonished that they seem to think of themselves as so 'separate' when they have three children together, run a household together, and presumably sleep in the same bed every night. But there's the fantasy of how relationships should work, and then there's how they actually work - or don't work, as the case may be.
When a vital and important emotional relationship becomes damaged, it's as if a major food source has been cut off. One must find a replacement for it, even if it's a chemical or inadequate food substitute of some sort - the body literally, chemically demands that these needs be met on a regular basis, just like our needs for food, water, air, sleep, etc. These needs are non-negotiable.
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