Mom in A Childhood Lost

I’ve started to realize that I guard my vulnerability closely. Even now, after so much work and opening up and trying so hard to connect with that vulnerability. It is distant. Aloof.
When I think of her, now, I instantly intellectualize and remind myself of how she’s wrong. And, don’t get me wrong, she is wrong. In so many ways, deep ways. It is easy to just stick with that. But, it’s like Stef says after awhile “Do you think I need to hear another story? I knew exactly what you were talking about when you told me the first one.” And he’s right. I don’t need to remind myself of all the ways that my mom is wrong. I am preoccupied with her stories. I am avoiding feeling.
The closest feeling I have is one of overwhelming, intense despair.
And, who wouldn’t want to avoid that?

And I face a dilemma. I have an avoidance mechanism that turns me away- which is a lot of work to undo and to decide whether the work and the pain of experiencing is worth it? But, what do I get? What is the benefit? I don’t know. I only know the cost… The cost is being distant. Aloof. To avoid vulnerability is to avoid passion. And that is a terrible cost.
I just don’t know if that cost is really enough to motivate me.
I do feel a slight panic at the thought of forever giving up passion. Of never being vulnerable. No… it’s more than slight panic. It is a pervasive, thrumming anxiety. It is so tense and tight it’s like it is humming. Humming along my nerves like very small, very sharp knives. Carving away ever so slightly with every pass, they glide along my nerves.

My son looked at me in a way that I recognized today. It was… shattering. We were walking along the sidewalk, and he looked up at me. I could tell that he wanted to share something, to say something; there was that shining eruption of spontaneous joy of discovery that he wanted to share. He looked at me, and his eyes dulled. And he looked away.
He looked away. And I think my heart broke.