009: UNWANTED

Welcome to Dark Void Disco.

This episode started from the question, “Where do these patterns come from, the patterns of my behavior?" And “How can I change the pattern?”

A pattern that I keep repeating in my relationships is the story of me being unwanted, abandoned by my partner.

The set and the characters may change, but I keep casting them, and myself, in the same roles.

This urges me to try to uncover the source. What is the root of this strange plant, that grows its flowers of abandonment wounds again and again in different relationships, with different people, no matter how many times I tear them up from the ground. I have to find the real root. The deepest root. Or it will just keep growing back.

Maybe I can’t find the very very deepest root, but I can dig a bit deeper than what I was able to see before, at least.

Depending on the type of wound, we may be more or less conscious about where it came from, about the source or the root. For me, I often receive hints through visuals that I see appearing in my mind, connected to certain behavior, or when I’m thinking about it, trying to understand a certain event or behavior, like if I went into a flight or fight response with my partner.

So, as I was contemplating my tendency to produce or project the feeling of being unwanted in my relationships, I kept seeing the same visual popping up in my mind: me when I was thirteen years old, almost fourteen, at then end of my first year in junior high, attending lessons with a teacher that I was in love with. I saw this visual of that year, that first year when I had lessons with this teacher, or classes. And this visual somehow came up in situations where I experienced this abandonment or being wanted in partnerships. And this hint opened a door to memories that I had been suppressing until now. My whole life. Or forgotten. They’d been there in the subconscious, but I haven’t consciously been aware of it, but I’ve been acting it out in my life.

And it’s strange to go back to this now, because it is not a very dramatic story, since nothing really happened between me and that teacher. And often when you think of traumatic events, of something that is creating a root or a source for these kinds of abandonment wounds you think of something really concrete or explicit that happened, and here I try to understand, what was it that created this wound since nothing really happened between us?

It was totally one-sided, and even though my emotions were strong, I was completely aware that this was more like a practice ground for feeling love, than a shared connection. I simply needed to feel and practice feeling, and even at that age I knew that, and I had read about it in some psychology books that this was a normal stage of development, where teenagers fall in love with some kind of an idol, if it is a musician or an artist or a teacher. So from my side, I didn’t have any expectations for anything from that person, from that teacher.

Though nothing "really happened", I have to acknowledge my feeling that there were strange things happening below the surface, that somehow resulted in me developing this deep wound, of feeling unwanted.

Even though nothing would be seen in the outer reality, it doesn't mean that nothing is going on underneath, in the subconscious. In the depths.

And that is what this podcast is for, after all. For going into those depths.

And now, in this episode, I want to go deeper into that. And explore what that was. May it serve as an example of this process of trying to uncover or understand a root to these kinds of destructive patterns.

Before I share my memories of these events, I want to point out that I don't think the adults who were a part of it could have acted much better than they did. And I think they were trying to be understanding, in the way that they were able to. It is simply unfortunate how things sometimes happen and how wounds can be created, even from the best of intentions.

I also want to point out the different stages that teenagers, and adults are at, and how it affects their approach or view of things, and how their experience feels.

I was thirteen, almost fourteen, and I felt extremely vulnerable. I remember life felt so huge and scary and unknown, and so did these new emotions raging up from inside of me. And I was surprised and a bit scared by the intensity. Yet, I had no choice but to feel them, to go through it, no matter how much I wanted suppress them with my rational mind. I had to surrender and accept that I have to feel it. And that’s how I treated this passion I felt for a teacher. “I have to go through this stage, to feel this, and then, hopefully it will pass.” So I was quite conscious about that. But I was still in very intense emotions, and very sensitive.

And the adults were in a very different place. I don’t think that they anymore had a way to access that kind of a raw emotion that a teenager was in. They saw the events from their mature, sensible point of view. And that is probably exactly what was right for them to do.

But between us, there was a clash. Where I was left with the feeling that I was being overlooked, that my emotional reality was denied any right to exist. That it was wrong. And the pain that resulted from this feeling, of being so very wrong, that the feelings I felt were wrong, grew in power, fueled by my intensely sensitive and vulnerable state. That’s just what happened

So, let's get on with the story, so you actually know the experience of it, what it was that was fueling these emotions.

The teacher that I was in love with was handsome and always dressed smartly. They felt very clean and polished, somehow. I can't quite remember their face anymore but I remember their energy. They seemed to have an aura of calm confidence. I have often felt mature for my age, while at the same time also being very immature, or maybe I should say, inhabiting a childlike wonder.

But when I saw this teacher, when I was 13 years old, it was clear that none of my classmates, no one my age, could compete. I just admired the teacher, and over time accepted that I was in love with them. Because they inhabited something that I was looking for and hoping to develop in myself. This kind of adult and calm confidence. And I was feeling so awkward and self-conscious at that age. But even then, I understood nothing would come of it, and in fact, I preferred it that way. So I tried to keep cool during lessons, sitting in the last row, in the back, and hoped that the teacher wouldn't notice the passion raging within me.

But of course, they did notice, somehow. I guess that such a fire will always have some flames escaping out. Such energy, even suppressed, even when attempting to hide it, can be felt.

Towards the end of my first year in high school, there was a parent-teacher conference. Not with that teacher, that I was in love with, but the woman who was the administrator of my group. At first, the meeting went on in the usual way. She spoke with my mom about my grades, what went well and where I could improve. But towards the end of the meeting, something strange happened.

She suddenly said that “Minnamari is very mature for her age”. That there was a teacher that had “noticed a look in my eye”. That’s what she said. And that for the next years, Minnamari will no longer take part in that particular teacher's class,she will attend another teachers, teaching the same subject instead. She said it would be better that way. Everyone would be more comfortable that way. And all of this, she was calmly and smilingly saying to my mother, who nodded and smiled back, while only giving me quick glances inbetween. My mother was the one receiving her words. The adult. The person, in the room. In the end, both of them turned to me and smiled, trying to show their most understanding faces.

I felt paralyzed. I was in shock. I had not spoken during the entire meeting, I was simply the object that these two adult women were discussing about amongst themselves. I just happened to be there to witness their exchange. Their judgements and verdicts of my efforts and developments. And now, my awkwardness, unsuitable emotions.

All I could feel was the nausea, the disgust, building inside of me. The discomfort of having been found out. Of my deep passion and fire so casually mentioned and then quickly pushed to the side. With a lid, oh so gently, placed over my burning heart.

Suffocating it.

The teacher knew about my feelings.

And it made them so uncomfortable, maybe even disgusted, that they didn't want to teach me anymore. They discarded me and handed me to another teacher instead.

I felt utterly unwanted.

Abandoned.

And disgusting.

I felt that if I had made a grown person so afraid of my love, there must be something very wrong with me. Something that was so disgusting and awful that it warranted abandonment without further explanations, without even daring to talk to me in person.

And the teacher who shared the news wasn't even addressing me, either, but my mother. I felt like I was nothing. Just a ghost floating silently in the background while they were sealing my fate.

(sigh)

It's not that I even minded being in another class from the teacher I was in love with. Actually, that was a huge relief. Because, I knew I'd have to get over them and these emotions, and it was easier when not sharing classes

But it still wasn't easy. For many years afterwards, the teacher’s face would suddenly pop up into my head and with it, a gut wrenching nauseating self-disgust. I was disgusting for making them feel so uncomfortable. My love for them was unacceptable. It was wrong. It was disgusting. It shouldn’t exist. No wonder they didn't want me. No wonder they discarded me.

Only now, twenty years later, have I started to realize that that was a traumatic event. For years, I had flashbacks about that disgust that I projected from them at myself. Only now, can I finally look into it, trying to understand what actually happened, and what conclusions I subconsciously drew from it, and how it has affected all of my subsequent relationships.

No wonder I keep repeating the same pattern in my later relationships.

That was my first blueprint of how my love was received. The strongest love I had felt at that point, was received as a burden. As something unwanted. As something disgusting and horrible. As something to suppress and silence and cast aside.

As I contemplate this event now, I realize that what further fueled my feeling of being unwanted was that whole situation of the parent-teacher conference, where I experienced myself as being overlooked. Where there wasn’t any space for me to be heard, or understood. There wasn’t any space for just processing my emotions.

I think that the teacher who spoke with my mother tried to make it appear neutral and play it down as nothing to worry about. I think that was the intention, and I can see it now and understand it. But sadly, in that situation, what it created for me was the feeling, the huge clash between an experience that was important to me, and then feeling that it wasn’t allowed to be as important, or as big. That there was actually no space, no allowance to feel what I felt. Of course there’s a difference between feeling something and expressing. But what that situation created for me was the feeling that I didn’t even have a right to feel what I felt. Because even with me trying to hide it, it had still made someone so uncomfortable that they didn’t want me anywhere close.

And I’m thinking back on that situation and...could there have been some way of handling it that could have helped, or not created this kind of reaction in me? Maybe if there had been some clarification, that this is normal, it happens, it’s nothing to worry about...and you’re allowed to feel what you feel, but it’s best to keep some distance.

And this is a tricky thing, because I believe that teacher was doing their best, and they were also trying to do that. She was trying to say that. That I was “mature for my age” was her way to express that, but what I heard, in that sensitive state, was that I was wrong. That I was something I wasn’t supposed to be, and that I felt something I wasn’t supposed to feel. And with my mother and that teacher, I carried this wound all these years, and there was no possibility that I would bring it up or talk about it, because in that situation there was no one who asked me to bring anything up, or... I had the feeling of “OK, no we have to close the lid on this and move on.” And I was so unable to ask for help or ask for clarification or, just...an adult who would help me process what actually happened, or my emotions about it. I felt that I was completely alone to draw the worst of conclusions, and that’s what I did.

No one really meant to hurt anyone. And I don’t even think that the teacher or my mother were at all aware of this wound that was created in me from this. Maybe because they weren’t in a place where they could feel that kind of sensitivity. So it didn’t exist in their reality. I can understand that. But that made it feel, for me, like it was not allowed to exist in mine either. And I tried to suppress it, for many years. And now I can look at it and say that my emotions were allowed to exist. And my reality was my reality. And their reality was theirs. They’re both existing, and they’re both just as right. We just had different experiences.

For many years I think that I also suppressed this, because in that situation it was all presented as so “easy-breezy”, that “Oh, she’s so mature, she’s such a mature girl for her age, she will understand it. She’s very rational.” And of course I did, but that left no space for me to also just feel what I felt. It was like “Oh, we don’t need to go deeper into this with her, because she understands”.

And yeah...I tried to take on that approach, like, “I don’t need to process this pain. I understand, with my mind. And that’s why I pushed it down, and that’s why my emotions, or my subconscious, pushed it back up again, in my later relationships.

(sigh)

I am repeating this pattern, of others receiving me that way, because that wound is still alive in me. Bacause that wound needs me to see it, to look at it, to heal it, instead of just suppressing it and trying to look away. My heart can't really love if it is hidden, suffocated, underneath a heavy lid.

I can now see how this pattern has repeated in many relationships, in different ways. Sometimes, I've played the role of the person who rejects the other. I have felt a need to assert my right to reject. Either from a sense of needing to feel the other side, what I felt was done to me, so that I could understand it, or feel empowered, by being in that position myself. But most times, I have played the same old role of feeling unwanted, and rejected, by my loved one, because that was simply how I still felt deep inside. That was what I expected. That was still inside of me, so that was the role that I projected for myself in the relationship. And in so doing, I cast my partner as the rejecting character, who was disgusted by my emotions. But, in reality, I was the one being disgusted with myself. I just needed to use them as a mirror. I needed to create situations where they would enact that way towards me, so that I could feel it again and again. So that it would be expressed out, instead of just bubbling in the subconscious as it did back then.

I needed to make those feelings real and concrete so that I could process them. And finally see what was going on.

My heart goes out to those who knew me during these years, during this process. Who knew me intimately enough to experience that. I don't know if any of those people are listening to this. But I will send you a thank you, and I'm sorry, into the void.

Thank you.

I’m sorry.

Maybe your own healing process also coincided with mine. Maybe I also had a role to play in your own story. Regardless of which, I wish you well. I wish you have found love in yourself, in your own life, in your own way.

And now I am lifting the lid that I felt was being put over my heart so many years ago. My love deserves to exist. I did not actually do anything wrong, I was just feeling what I felt, even if my love chose an unsuitable target. And I know that my intention was never to burden them.

And I know the adults tried to do their best too. But even then, I have a right to feel hurt, by the events. Both can be true. I have a right to feel the pain I need to feel, to acknowledge the wound. To go deep to the root. And I can also acknowledge that they were probably doing their best too. And they did well. Because by now I know, that adults get scared too. I can understand if my love would scare someone. Because I know it runs deep. It runs deep and it burns with a vengeance. And it already did, back then. I can understand that even an adult would get scared. ‘Cause I’m an adult now, and I also get scared. And I also try my best, and maybe, wounds will still be created, despite my best intentions.

This is the root, or at least a root to the issue. To my feeling of being unwanted. And now I see, it is not a root to be violently torn up. It is a root to be tended, because the plant that grows from this root can grow into different shapes. Now that I acknowledge the root, I can finally give it what it needs.

Acceptance. Appreciation.

Care. And love.

Accepting the depth of my emotions. Appreciating the passion that this depth brings.

Caring for myself, no longer unwanted, because I want to be with and care for myself.

And holding a love that burns patiently, with power, because that's just what it does.

My love is radiating out from my being. But it is also radiating in, into myself.

That is what it was made to do.

What I was made to do.

I lift the lid away from my heart.

I release all that self-disgust and fear that I used aim at myself. And at others.

The fear of being abandoned and unwanted.

No one can abandon me anymore.

Because I stopped abandoning myself.

I am no longer unwanted.

Because I want to know, to love and care for myself.

And when I can do that, I can love others too.