People talk all the time about abuse. And there’s those who have had much worse abuse than mine. Horrific levels of it. But what they don’t talk about is how the worst scars aren’t physical, they’re mental.

I don’t talk about the abuse that left me with C-PTSD. All I want to do today is talk about one of the things it left me with: anxious attachment style.

I’m not going to give you a definition of it, that’s what Google is for. But it means I’m continually in fear of people leaving me. All the time. Because I never had any certainty most of my life, about anything. Couldn’t depend on love from my parents, the narcissist and the co-dependent. Social circumstances left me with very little in the way of friends, or being able to make new friends. I spent a lot , and I mean a LOT of time alone as a child. So what do you think happens when I try to forge new relationships? It usually goes badly.

Children mirror the behavior they see around them. My parents very rarely had friends over. I can count on one hand the times they did. And this has messed up my ideas of friendship and love. With disastrous consequences.

I don’t know how to be a friend, or at least it seemed that way, up until this year. I have to work hard at friendships and relationships. There’s a quote from a wresting documentary that has struck me for a good decade: “I’m not sure I’m his best friend, but he’s my best friend”.

That kind of imbalance in friendship is natural. You have friends come, they go, life goes on. But for me, I made some friends that I thought were gone forever. Most of what I thought were my friends were, vanished. I’m not blaming them. I can be forgetful at times. But if I keep trying, and you don’t bother, ever, are you really my friend?

Anxious attachment can be overwhelming. And it can lead you to smother people. Being alone a lot as a child has left me feeling like I’m a bother to people, much of the time. I think people are always going to be like that, even when they’re not. I’m in therapy for it.

But you can’t let it ruin your life. We all need lives away from other people, time on our own. You can’t pour from an empty cup. And you shouldn’t put all your emotional eggs in a one person basket. Humans work best in groups. I made myself alone in what I thought was my group, then blew it all up. Now, I’m slowly rebuilding that group, person by person. And it’s hard. Having to form new social networks at my age is tough. Not smothering loved ones is tough, because you drain them.

I’m not perfect, and I can be a pain to talk to about bad stuff. I catastrophize, and I have executive dysfunction like you wouldnt believe. But I’m getting better, and I’d like some more people to ride along with, here on this big rock we live on. Come along? Good night