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Well, if this is the jolly time of year I sure don’t feel one bit jolly.  Family is too far away.  Trying to go ‘out in public’ to make some kind of human connection is, well, just about hopeless.  So here I am home alone again, as usual.

I wouldn’t MIND that so much if the ratio weren’t so completely lopsided.  Maybe one percent of the time when I am ‘out there’ where the ‘other people’ are I MIGHT feel a little bit connected to someone.  But like a groove worn all the way through one of those old fashioned LP vinyl records, my being alone just seems to be a fundamental fact of my existence – no matter how much I wish it (I) were otherwise.

I will go out on Christmas day to a local community dinner and that will help — in part because I know the people who have no other place to go that gather there are more like me than most people are in the world.  That still won’t guarantee that I will feel CONNECTED, though, because of my lack of ability to feel connected to other people is a consequence of the serious insecure attachment pattern built into my body-brain from the time I was born (thanks to my insanely abusive mother who was able to pull off her horrific abuse of me without anyone’s intervention).

So while I would much rather be able to write of a different tale, I am left with the one that is the true one for me.  It is NOT that I ‘don’t need people like other people do’ as someone told me once.  It’s that I desperately need people and always have — but I honestly don’t believe I have the internal wiring necessary to ever feel true connection with others even when I am around them (with the exception of a very very very few people who are closest to me).

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Even though I am living in the same body that trauma built during my first 18 years of life, I didn’t know THEN that I would eventually, as an adult, have to try to consciously PRETEND that my being around others is the same for me as it looks like as I watch most everyone else.  In fact, I didn’t even know as an adult that I pretended to be a socially-engage-able person.

Now I know that I didn’t have a safe and secure attachment with ANYONE during my childhood — not ANYONE — and therefore all of the incredibly complex wiring didn’t get put into place for me.  I can no longer genuinely pretend that being with others is remotely satisfying or soothing to me.

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There is always The Watcher.  The Watcher is not alone, of course.  There are a multitude of Others who watch the Watcher.  The Watcher is never truly engaged with other people.  The Watcher ‘goes away’ if I am EVER truly and wholly engaged.  But that is so seldom that it rarely happens.

There are The Coaches, too.  There is the one that tries to help me keep up with others during social engagement, trying to give me cues to help me read other people’s social cues.  I can’t keep up.  I can’t trust or know or believe or act like I know what all the social cues people learned through human interactions from the time they were born even ARE — let alone how they operate and how I am supposed to respond to them.

There is a Verbal Coach who tries to help me stay in synch in conversation, tries to keep me in beat with the rhythm of the verbal exchange.  The Watcher is always there watching me AND the coaches — because The Watcher has no emotion (more like a Razor’s Edge).

Mostly when I am attempting to engage with other people I am extremely aware of being The Outsider.  I was an outsider in the life of my family for the first 18 years of my life.  Being The Outsider is probably as natural a state for me as being an adequately engaged human social being is for most other people.

I say ‘most other people’ because the ONLY people who are not naturals in their essence at social engagement are those who were either born with rare shyness genes, autism spectrum genes (etc.), or are those of us who suffered from extreme trauma, abuse and unsafe and insecure attachment relationships — alone — birth to age one and most usually AT LEAST birth to age two while the social-emotional-preverbal language brain-nervous system was forming itself.

ALL of these people who are not ‘naturals” (with the exception of the shyness gene people as long as they were not an abused/neglected infant) are NOT native language speakers and are missing most of the most primary and fundamental human social connection body-brain wiring/circuitry necessary to truly be able to connect — and to FEEL connection to and with other people.

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So here come the holidays.  At least I am fortunate that I do not have to deal with any negative family charades which must be very difficult for severe infant-child abuse survivors that DO.

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I used to pretend to be a socially OK person because I used to be able to BORROW the attachment patterns of other people.  I was very very good at being an attachment-chameleon — which by itself was NOT a ‘bad’ thing.  Being able to borrow the attachment patterns of other people enabled me NOT to abuse my own children because I could borrow the attachment abilities they were born with at the same time I was able to respond appropriately to them so that their attachments could grow and develop in safe and secure ways.  Borrowing attachments also allowed me NOT to be as socially isolated all of my adult life as I am now.

I know this now, looking back from my age-59 vantage point at all the different kinds of relationships I used to be able to maintain at different stages of my adult life.

Borrowed Attachment is directly connected to having a Disorganized-Disoriented (Reactive) Insecure attachment pattern.  I simply was able to organize and orient myself around other people’s attachment patterns.  (And yes, as I have said before on this blog, being this dependent upon others was like being on life support.  I was borrowing from them what I did not and could not have myself — like being dependent on a life support system.)

At least in my life my own insecure attachment patterns have not caused undo hardships on others.  While these others might WISH that I was able to form strong, clear and sustained attachment connections with them, I simply can’t, and these others are not harmed.  They are simply unable to form the kinds of connections with me that they might rather have because I cannot form attachments of my own with them.

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Rather than go into any more detail here about any of this, I just want to present a stark contrast to how I am feeling and to how I am as an isolated being unable to form attachments in the world (except with the ‘chosen few’ who love me enough in spite of all my difficulties).

My daughter told me of how my 9-month-old grandson attended a meeting with his mother and father today at a bank.  One of the women there wanted to take the baby off so that his parents could concentrate on paper signing.  Back came the woman in only a few moments with baby and his tear streaked cheeks and hearty bawling.

Back to his parents he quickly quieted back to contentment.

“Most excellent!”  I assured my daughter.  “That’s EXACTLY what you want the little one to be doing at this age.  He is wonderfully demonstrating his secure attachment.”

I also told my daughter that a baby that will, at this age and up to around the age of one, happily go off with strangers is NOT likely to have a happy life.  A healthy infant HAS to have powerfully strong safe and secure — loving and happy — attachments with its earliest caregivers FIRST AND FOREMOST because EVERYTHING else in its growth and development has already depended on this and will for the rest of its life depend on this firm, good and RIGHT foundation.

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Given my mother’s severe Borderline (abusive) condition I never stood a chance and I will the price for what she did to my attachment system as it built itself into my growing body-brain for the rest of my life — holidays or not.

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