Some days You’re the big ol’ gator Some days You’re the big ol’ bass Heading out the door each day Especially in the year 2020 I’m never quite sure Which day it will be But as I head out today I’m planning not to be That big ol’ bass Or at least to swim faster Than the one The big ol’ gator Bites in the ass
Emotional abandonment created in him a longing to feel worthy of attention and love. It started in childhood when his parents were dealing with a family tragedy in their lives which caused a deep depression in them. Their emotional shutdown caused their remaining children to feel abandoned. As a young boy he learned how to became charming and polite to get other peoples attention to replace the attention he wasn’t getting at home.
As a teenager budding into a young man he became even more charming and learned how to manipulate young women so that he would always have at least three in his life: the one he just left holding onto his left hand, the one he was with holding onto his right hand, and the one he was potentially going to next standing on the sidelines with open arms. That is a pattern that continues today and will never end because his need for attention and the feeling of being loved can never be filled by anyone but his mother and she can never turn back the clock to his childhood and replace the lack of emotion, love, attention and acceptance that he longs for.
I wish I had understood this when we met, maybe I wouldn’t have let myself fall for his charms. By the time we met he had perfected his charming craft. I should have realized the string of women he had in his life was a warning sign. A string of exes on the hook, never completely severing ties. A compulsion to flirt with every woman he meets until she finds him irresistible. All of this allows him choices. The one he is with at any given time believes she is the one he will be faithful to. She thinks she holds his heart in her hands but his heart is elusive and unable to be satisfied, always needing more. He will bind her up in an emotional chord that she will find hard to cut as he charmingly attaches her to himself for a lifetime.
She is lost in loving him
While he Calls, texts, meets others
On the down low
Always setting up the next
Possibility
Just in case he decides to leave
Or she leaves
He won’t be alone
He can’t be alone
He is terrified of it
He must have attention
To feel the possibility of love
He never learned
That he is enough and
Worthy of love
There was a time I foolishly believed his confessions of forever love and allowed him to bind me with his charming chord. I may never be completely free of his memory and he will forever love me in his way. It’s just a very toxic way. Decades have passed and I’m still not completely healed from his emotional abandonment, but I have survived it, and now I am finally able to recognize it and the effects of it in him and in me.
He isn’t the only soul lost in such a cycle. All of us create pain in various ways as we damage other souls while trying to find love and be loved. In healing I am learning to accept myself, to be content with myself, to love myself.
Now I stand alone, hoping that I will not fall into another emotional hole and praying that I will not create any more pain or damage to another soul in the ever elusive arena of love.
E. A. Fussell 