The Panic Machine

So, the panic machine continues. I am starting to feel more and more strongly for Samson, which mostly delights me, but sometimes terrifies me. Usually I feel content and happy about things with him; I am not engaging in over-analysis or feeling uncertain all the time, like I often did with past situations (hello, NY Guy?). But now and then, with somewhat increasing frequency, I keep having momentary emotional panic attacks, where I suddenly realise how attached I am getting to him and then remember just how emotionally vulnerable such attachments have previously left me. I definitely wear my heart on my sleeve and I do have slight reservations based on bad experiences, but even with a cynicism-induced delay on my feelings, I still fall hard and fast once I eventually give in. I can feel it happening now and for the first time, I am actually really quite scared, to the point of upset at times. It is an intermittent feeling that is not ever-present, but when it is there, it is raw. Occasionally I can feel the fear of rejection and the memory of painful emotions building up inside, until I want to withdraw and just say, “OK, this was nice while it lasted, there was some lovely potential there, but you will change your mind eventually and I don’t want to have fallen completely in love with you when that happens. So, I’ll just get out now while my heart is still somewhat intact, so I won’t have to salvage the fragments of it that are left from the wreckage that will remain when you decide you don’t want it anymore. Bye then!”

I feel stupid being so consumed by this fear, especially since the effect of it would negatively impact my situation with Samson, even though it is based entirely on the actions of people other than him. Occasionally I will be indirectly reminded of something that The Ex, NY Guy or BFTP did and I feel angry and hurt and feel the need to barricade myself in an emotional fortress, where I remain cynical and closed-off and unavailable. I still get the occasional panic when I walk down the street to my house and see a car parked in the spot The Ex used, or a car driving towards me, feeling the horrible sense of anxiety that he has turned up to bother me again. Sometimes when I feel the need to talk to Samson, perhaps if I am feeling low, I am reminded of the many times I tried to do this with NY Guy and couldn’t get through to him, or he didn’t have time for me, or he brushed me off with some sort of generic statement to fob me off or an excuse to justify his lack of support. It makes me feel reluctant to contact Samson or to open up to him at times, because I can’t bear to feel that horrible prolonged sense of rejection and disappointment again. Occasionally, when I am feeling close to him and happy about how much he is starting to mean to me, I’ll remember how uplifted I felt when I got back in contact with BFTP and how close we became because we opened up to each other emotionally to a profound level. I remember how much I let my guard down and allowed myself to trust in what he said, only to again be left hanging without any explanation, apology or acknowledgement. Suddenly, feeling closer to Samson doesn’t feel quite so comforting and I panic that I am oblivious to warning signs or am letting my guard down again without thought. I worry that I haven’t learned my lesson, that I am foolish to allow myself to get close to someone again, to allow them to get to know my heart and for me to give it to them in the process, not fully realising that is happening until it is too late. It upsets me that I feel this way. I hate that the people who never loved me in the way I needed, who didn’t treat me in the way I deserved or respect me enough to be truthful instead of cowardly, have warped my thinking and dislodged my trust to the point where I am fearful to truly be myself. I occasionally feel myself playing down my feelings or disguising them, or pretending to be unaffected by things that I am actually sensitive to. So what if Samson rejects me or breaks my heart? If I put enough barriers up, he wouldn’t have known the real me anyway, so it doesn’t count as a proper rejection. Heartbreak really mucks up your thinking.

It’s at times like this that I also wonder how on earth I am going to pull myself out of this period of depression, where medication feels necessary just to keep me from falling apart. The pressure I have started to put on myself to get better isn’t helping and I know it, but I can’t bear the thought of feeling unstable for another year. I hate that I sometimes feel like I have made lots of progress and then the familiar fears and insecurities pop up and make me feel that I have been taken right back to the beginning. I hadn’t felt the need to write for a while. Actually, that’s not quite true. I hadn’t felt able to write, or at least hadn’t felt that my mind was clear enough to express how I felt, if I could even make sense of it at all. But the recurrence of these fears and anxieties is something that I need to get out of my system and not something that would be healthy to harbour or leave unexpressed. I am still wary to a small degree of telling Samson about every time these insecurities surface, partly because I don’t want to repel him or give him any (more?) reason to change his mind, but also because I have learned that with sharing one’s inner thoughts there needs to be a happy medium. I went for so long feeling that I had to withhold my emotions, that when I started trying to get better at expressing them, for a while I felt like I had to do so with every single little alteration in mood or mindset. I’ve realised that there is a huge difference between being selective with what information to share and with actively withholding or being dishonest about things. I don’t need to tell someone every single tiny insecurity that pops into my head, especially when quite often the next day (or the same day) that feeling has completely subsided. I am learning to deduce the emotions I should share and those that I should work on alone. At times, it feels lonely dealing with certain things inside my own head without an alternative perspective, knowing that advice or reassurance from anyone else will make no difference if I can’t change my own thinking for myself. But it’s preferable to the greater sense of loneliness I feel when I’ve shared such difficulties and they were not received positively. I know that much from experience.