Dating a dissociative

Daddy always knows what I need.  I believed I needed to have a partner move with me to the South for close proximity to observe a lifestyle that could have easily been hidden through distance.  I had trust issues and knew the emotional distance I was able to concoct in order to survive deep interaction with others; I wanted my eyeballs on any situation that confirmed I was dating someone similar to myself. The daily routine, especially seeing what little pursuit my partner, “D”, had for life without the prompting of others, unveiled a glimpse of the struggles we could have had in the future.  Without witnessing his ability to numb out with blank stares or watch his apathy thwart his potential, I may not have recognized my own ability to flip a switch for emotion after a dissociative episode. We understood each other because of the deep pain from our formative years that created escape personalities for coping. In a formative way, our fragmented identities from childhood traumas told us that being together could heal the time warp of what we lost. He was a distraction from the fear I face right now, moving away from the known by myself. I brought him with me on the first move because I ultimately didn’t know I had it in me to succeed alone.  Now, four years later I am picking up where I left off, single and wide-eyed looking for the adventures that I got side-tracked from my whole life.

Always looking for a Savior in the natural, I wanted help making sense of life and didn’t trust myself to do it.  I took in all of the stray cats and believed that if I helped others they would remain devoted to me.  Talk about the epitome of co-dependency, I was the poster child.  I could direct others on the course of their lives, but clung onto them with a clasped fist hoping I could find security in their ability to overcome challenges because I cowered under fear of knowing myself.  I believed that someone elses success could be associated with my support of his dream so that I could reap the benefits, that way pursuing my dreams would be icing on the cake.  The only problem was that I needed D to catch my vision first and see that he could evolve into a sober, godly man with purpose.  Nevermind that I was needing him to prove that he was braver than me in the area of faith because I wanted him to heal my brokenness from childhood, disprove my doubts and affirm that love wins.  But I was consumed with his inability to lead, totally missing the guidance of God already within me.

I suppose knowing D’s role in his family unit of being submissive to his grandfathers tyranny made me that much more motivated for him finding his voice.  My suspicion of seeming just as domineering surfaced when I quickly learned that D tried to be all that I wanted him to be, but at his own expense.  I have so many memories of our equal desperation, neither of us knowing how to comfort our inner child and mistaking the presence of each other as fulfillment of it.  I saw the scared little boy in him so often and it created such angst in me because I couldn’t deal with how his emotion made me feel.  He tried his damnest to cover his anger from childhood and it didn’t manifest a sound out of him.  His refusal to react with rage as he did when young stripped him of all expression leaving me to assume the glaze in his eyes, the paralyzed decision-making, and the passive personality was my responsibility to heal, when he too already had a Savior.  And yet because I wanted my inner child to be nurtured I often had an entire conversation in my head about feeling unable to help him when I was so lost myself.

I only looked responsible on the outside because I made the final decisions for both of us and was transparent in my expression of fear, shame and doubt.  But big deal because our drive was the same, utter terror of facing feelings that would tap into our abandonment as kids.  So I always got angry when he couldn’t “help me” make decisions or his needs over-rode mine and I had nothing to give.  Truly I was screaming on the inside as he would pull away or swallow a prescription that mirrored the dissociation I had used to escape from life years before.  Turns out that I saw a familiar attribute in D’s ability to go with the flow that I used in my own darkest and scarier moments to avoid feeling.  Somehow I understood why he passively lived due to my own connection with dissociative escape patterns.  My expecting him to lay down pills he popped to exist, was nothing less than taking away my multiple personalities of control, both routes to divert painful memories that still needed healing.  I knew the loss of life he was living and yet I still wanted proof that one of us could snap out of it.  I did just that.  I fought for my freedom and turned toward faith instead of a parson.  And here I am, moving forward with Daddy as my leader and rescuer from my past.  I guess in the re-packing process I have seen all that I will not box up for false assurance anymore.  I am in touch with the sadness of losing a relationship that will not travel forward because it was never supposed to.  Our dissociative dating cycle came full circle and I can smile knowing my association with brokenness does not mean I have to remain there.