Most of my life, I had a starvation mentality toward love.  It’s not important, but I think this comes from losing my nanny when I was three. She disappeared from my life.  So, I made up a story:  She left because there’s something wrong with me.  I decided that I have to be perfect; otherwise, the people I love will abandon me.  I was afraid of conflict and avoided saying hard things, as if each relationship was always on the brink of shattering, and each person a moment away from realizing that I’m not lovable after all.

When my brain shut down, these patterns were put to a test.  I couldn’t tend to my relationships.  I couldn’t reply to a text message.  I couldn’t tell someone that I loved them, or ask how they were doing.  There was a time that the only way I could express what was happening in my inner world was to cry, and you could only see that if you were standing in front of me.

I was terrified that people would think that I didn’t care about them, and that they would stop caring about me.  There was nothing I could do to soothe my fear of losing people, except to accept that I might lose them.  It was hard, but I could not keep agonizing over how other people felt, and about things I could not do.  I accepted that people I love might not stick around when I had nothing to give them.  I let go.

As my brain healed, and I got a little bit stronger, anger became available to me again (previously, my mind has been too compromised to hold this emotion).  Some important people had let me down, and with the extent of my need, multiplied by my great and profound powerlessness, I became consumed by rage.  I reached a tipping point when keeping my rage in was hurting me more than it hurt to verbalize.  So, I started sending nasty-grams.

I didn’t hold back.  I didn’t want to hurt anybody, but I needed to get these things out of me so they would stop spinning around my head, making me dizzy and blind with rage.  My conflict avoidance, my reluctance to say hard things, could not withstand the intensity of my peculiar and terrible experience of brain damage.  My starvation mentality toward love broke down.

People that love me more than anything heard me tell them how they hurt me when I needed them most.  They heard me tell them that, in this most horrific experience of their life and mine, their actions made it worse.  I don’t think there is anything more painful that I could have said to them.  But most of them stuck around.

I learned that, in most cases, my relationships are strong.  I learned that most of my people will keep on loving me, even when loving me requires shouldering excruciating pain.  This is a beautiful thing that I wish for everyone.

The story that I had carried through life – that I am one wrong word away from being dropped by everyone I love – is false.

I did lose one key person, someone who could not relate to me when there was nothing left to take.  Even though it hurts, it’s the best thing that this person left my life.  I deserve relationships with people that care about me in a resilient way—who are there for me when I need them, and who don’t disappear when they get uncomfortable or scared.

I wondered, when I healed, if my starvation mentality toward love would come back.  But it didn’t.  I broke through.

Now, when someone hurts me, I tell them that they hurt me; and when someone disappoints me, I tell them that they disappointed me.  I trust that they can handle the hard truths when that’s what it is needed for us to come closer and repair… and, if they can’t, if our relationship ends, then that is what is needed, and that I will be okay.

This is huge growth for me.

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