when I cry

it's scary, because I need for someone to hear me, and respond, and yet that terrifies me, at the same time - if they respond, I need them not to cling to me, thinking somehow that the crying is about them (you won't believe this, but it's happened more than once, not just with my mother.)

I need to hang on to somebody, desperately. I mean, not that the hanging on itself would be desperate, but I mean I really need it, badly. It's like I'm trapped in this place where I can't go forward and I can't go back and I can't go sideways and I can't go anywhere, really, except just sit here and wait for it to stop.

Sometimes I try the Jack Daniels; sometimes that works, for a few hours. Tried it this afternoon - not working - slept for about an hour, brief relief, but as soon as it faded, I'm back in this gritchy, scritchy, dry-eyed need to cry, to hang on, to bellow, to wail. To just hang on.

Why won't they let me? Why is it such a bad thing, such a horrible thing, to need something from somebody? How did things get to be this way, so that everything in human relationships is upside down and backward from the way it's supposed to be???

***
With my first partner (the five-year one) I kept up the 'autonomous' facade* - I think it's even part of what attracted him to me in the first place. I had that self-sufficient, yet somewhat nurturing air that so many men seem drawn to in women - I think it gives them the sense that we'll play 'mommy' for them, while never needing anything in return (which is, of course, what proper mommies do). It's funny (not) how the culture provides neatly for men to get unmet childhood needs met in their adult relationships - in fact it's almost set up that way - and yet women? Well, we're pretty much just fucked. In every way you can think of. And I know I've said that before, probably in exactly those same words. And I'll probably say it again.

My brother would say that's 'playing the victim'. Hm. Since when is 'pointing out a systemic injustice' the same as 'playing the victim'? Maybe you'd rather we went all Mary Antoinette on your asses and started chopping off heads? We could do that, y'know. In fact, Ms. Bobbitt had an idea along similar lines that put the shoe nicely on the other foot for a change. Gave a whole new realism to the idea of a 'castrating' whatsits.

I wouldn't mind meeting some of men's needs if they felt equally obliged to meet mine in return.

***
Once I understood what was going on, after the five-year partner and I split up, I searched long and hard for someone who'd be there for me. Never yet found him, but did find guys who were able to provide bits and pieces of what I needed, now and then.

The problem was that those tiny tastes only whetted my appetite - the effect was to bring to the surface the mountain of unmet needs that I still had to deal with. I can't deal with them alone, because they're relational; I can't meet them with a therapist, because that person is being paid to be a 'friend', in ways that only underscore (for me, at least) the falseness of the relationship. In a way the very use of therapy in and of itself is re-traumatizing, because it says that I can't have what I need unless I pay for it. Which is pretty goddamn fucking insulting if you think about it for even a split second - that I have to pay for things which should be a taken-for-granted, inherent, built-in part of every child's relationship with her parents says, yet again, that I am somehow so fucked up that I don't even deserve to have my most basic needs met.

What a fucking vicious cycle.


*To clarify, it wasn't really that I kept up the 'facade' of autonomy - it's more that I didn't even know I could ask for anything from a partner. I hadn't yet read all the self-help books that say that it should be a two-way street and all that.