In my more vulnerable moments, I wrestle with feeling like I am always on the outside looking in. I feel like there is no place for me because I am not truly a part of anything.
The logical part of myself knows this is not the case. I have close friends, a church family, my isurvive family, my readers here, my coworkers, etc. I am certainly not alone. However, in my heart of hearts, I remain vulnerable to feeling like I don’t belong anywhere.
In my family of origin, just about all of my relatives “loved me in their own way.” I so needed to believe that my father or my mother/abuser loved me, but the only way it ever made sense was to tack on the phrase “in his/her own way.”
I stumbled upon a saying that helped me come to terms with how someone could love me without my being able to feel loved:
Just because someone doesn’t love you with all that you need doesn’t mean s/he isn’t loving you with all that they have. ~ Author unknown
This quote helped me to recognize that it was possible for my mother or father to love me with all of the love they had to give while, at the same time, the amount of that love being sorely inadequate for my needs. Sadly, I married someone who falls into this category, and it applies to my extended family as well. Yes, I have people in my family who love me, but it’s always with the qualifier of “in his/her own way.”
I have built my own family locally, and I have friends who love me deeply. However, I am still not “family” as much as they try to say that I am. At the end of the day, I am on the outside. I am not part of their families (for better or for worse), nor I am family beyond “in their own way” in my family of marriage. Meanwhile, I have cut ties with most of my family of origin (other than my sister, who does love me – period – but she doesn’t live locally).
Even my child joined my family through adoption, and he will sometimes remind me that I am not his “real” mother. Most of the time, this doesn’t bother me. I’ll say things like driving him around seems like a lot of work for a “fake” child. However, he will sometimes catch me at a vulnerable time, and it will hurt. (My son is one of the few people in my life who I know truly loves me – period.)
I don’t always feel this way, but it’s a vulnerability beneath the surface, and I wonder if I will ever fully process these feelings.
Photo credit: Hekatekris
I feel that way too. Thanks for putting my feelings into words.
yes, even in the throws of opening the way for feelings to come out and facing a new truth, i feel very outside of wht is going on around me. two steps out of the scene, there are moments in therapy short seconds, but there just the same, where i do feel connected without thinking through it.They are fleeting, though. Distant and disconnected is what accompanies me until i wake from dreams or in night terrors. Those feel real and up front. logic has no place in those minutes.
i don’t think so. Not as long as you still NEED to believe that LOVE is what they felt “in their own way”. I think if I had allowed myself to KNOW that my mother not only abused me, but did it cause she resented and hated my very existence I would have never let my children know her. If i had quit LOVING her so much stronger and stronger all my life trying to MAKE her believe that I LOVED her and therefore she should LOVE me back~ maybe I would have had the sense to realize that I was much better off on the OUTSIDE. I should have left and never gone back from the point where they made me a ward of the court. But NO I kept on feeling the LOVE i was giving and applying the emotion I felt to her. Then she died and requested on her deathbed that my children and siblings have nothing to do with me. She’s two years dead and they all treat me as though i was buried with her. My son has told me that I am blessed that they DO leave me alone, cause otherwise i would be in danger. So I guess what I am trying to say is… if my reason for being was to be included; my conditions make it impossible for me to be happy, But if I am on my own out here alone with myself… I can look at life from the paradigm that I am connected to source and God lives through me, so everything is for that purpose. I am feeling it, living it, creating it and accepting it and IT is I AM and I am learning to be better than I have ever been before. I find that the direction of my thoughts can take me from banging on the walls of the proverbial BOX begging to be included….> to soring with the eagles and thinking those poor souls stuck in the box of thinking that they could NEVER make it without the love in the box are doomed to be nothing more than confections. The love YOU feel is the LOVE that’s real. Just be LOVE living large OUT there! YOU BELONG regardless of how THEY feel. Oh, and Faith I LOVE you and I am SO grateful to YOU. Thank You so much for this connection with other survivors.
Vickie,
“But NO I kept on feeling the LOVE i was giving and applying the emotion I felt to her.”
I have come to believe that my parents and many others do not have the capacity to love. In a real way my parents do not love their other children more than me they simply treat them better as it suits their needs. They would say they are close. Thing is as they get older the facade of their closeness is fading.
I have come to understand what my parents were happened long before I was born it had nothing to do with me. Why they never learned to love is not knowable by me.
My capacity to love was not effected by the abuse how I expressed it was.
It is a hard dynamic of loving ones self. It is necessary to be able to express love. If it is done so that one can better express love it seems not to work. It is more a result of loving ones self that one can express love more freely than the cause of being able to express love is loving ones self.
Faith-
You put things so well and in a way that is very understanding. Thanks for your wisdom you put into each blog. Your a beautiful person without even knowing you. Your words tell alot about a person. For someone who has went through what you has taken a lot of work and dedication for your own personal cause (healing). Healing is tough and tedious work. I’m proud to be part of your blog. I’m on my own difficult journey. Everyone one of us is on their own journey and everyone of us is important, lovable and caring people. Blog like this one where Faith pours he heart out to us helps us all on our journey. Thank you Faith for what you bring to us, hope, wisdom, understanding of ourself, caring, compassion and courage to continue on journey when it gets tough to. Your words guide us and gives us hope that this is all worth even thou at the time ir doesn’t seem that way. You have saved my life a couple of times and I deeply thank you for it,
Thumper
Thanks, Thumper. :0)
~ Faith
I am taking an amazing online course right now, and it is full of women who remind me of you and many of the brave and courageous people who post here who’ve spent a lot of time working on themselves but wonder if they will ever truly process certain things. I won’t push it on you, but if you’re interested I can tell you more about it. We spent all last week working on what you posted about today, the “I am” statements we have, like your “I am alone” and “I do not belong”, statements we made up when we were young and which keep us in a pattern.
Hi Faith,
I believe your post highlights something very important. We all, at our very core, desire unconditional love. Unfortunately, few people in this world love others unconditionally. IME, one person who loves you unconditionally can be enough especially if it is a spouse. However, with a past history of abuse, it does seem that this deficiency of love during one’s childhood years accentuates our need for more unconditionally loving relationships as adults. As you so well stated, we certainly notice when relationships are not unconditional. The flip side is that we certainly notice when they are.
Best wishes
“Hallways on the outside of whatever side there was.” Dylan
For me it is much about in my family there would be no. Sophie’s choice no conflict at all I would be the one dead.
It is in part the fear if I do belong I can not be me ever again.
“I would not want to join any group with so little self respect they would have me.
Wow. “Not my real mom” sounds really harsh to me.
I’m sorry you are feeling like this. I have bouts of it myself. Like my family is more receptive and responsive and caring towards my husband than me! That is a real kicker.
I find in those times that I reconnect with my belief in the great “whatever” Mystery, God, Nature, all of it… and I realize that my life is significant and meaningful no matter how much I don’t feel acknowledged or loved the way I’d like/need to be. And then I try to recognize that greater “Whatever” (God,,,,?) love and I feel better.
Good luck Faith.
peace,
m
The problem with. Being loved is then you know. That you weren’t and when you are not.
So true.
agree. all of a sudden you have an unshakeable point of reference. makes me wish to be able to go back to emotional psychopathy sometimes.
That is an extremely painful place to be- the place of vulnerability because of the love that should have been there from a good parent. The problem I have found, is there is no way to ever get back that love. It is like a man without legs trying and wishing he would grow some, seeing everyone who has legs and the painful realization that he will never have real legs.
That is how I feel when it comes to hungering after the love I so desperately crave from a parent. I have finally come to the place where I just say, “It is what it is.” I cannot change it- and starting from here, I will love me and celebrate the life and love I do have to the fullest of my ability.
As the man without legs begins to rejoice in the body he does have . . .
Wow! Your “on the outside looking in” comment triggered me. I hadn’t thought about it for a long time, just buried it. Now I’m very angry.
Hi, Elizabeth.
I am sorry that this triggered you. I hope that you have found healing in this area.
~ Faith
I feel that all the time too. Best wishes.
[...] On the Outside Looking In (faithallen.wordpress.com) [...]
Thank you for that and for the quote I need to try to remember as it really resonated with me. “Just because someone doesn’t love you with all that you need doesn’t mean s/he isn’t loving you with all that they have.”
I’m so sorry you feel the way that you do. I think i gave up on being loved a long time ago and turned my back on it because it felt better than having to face it and the fact that i never fit in anywhere
{{{{{{{{Faith}}}}}}}}
I understand.
This is something I too struggle with often. This nagging feeling that I’m on the outside of something. Everything, in fact. I suppose I try to focus on the connections I do have, however limited they may feel at times. I’m glad to hear you have people who you know truly love you (your sister, your son).
Thank you for sharing this.
Hi Faith,
I’m late to this comment thread but it did strike a chord with me as well. Lately, something has clarified for me in the “outside looking in” feeling that I am fairly sure will be with me ton one degree or another for this whole life. There is such loneliness in this. In fact, I’ve always had a soul deep loneliness.
trigger warning…
The other day, my chiropractr did something (put my neck in a little traction device for a couple minutes) that triggered me…I cannot manage anything around my neck. I didn’t think I showed my reaction, but he noticed and afterward he said, “What did you think about the neck traction?” I responded, “I’m not good with things around my neck.” In a very kind tone he said, “Like rope?” I said, “Yes.” I’ve never told him about the abuse, but in the moment I realized, by working with my back, etc. over the years, it has told him a little of what was done to me. And, because he is kind, although I felt a little exposed, I felt KNOWN! He knew and was kind.
end trigger:
It dawned on me that I feel on the outside, and lonely, because only two people really “know” me, my therapist, who has heard every memory and my closest friend who has become a sister. Other than that, some may know I was abused as a child, but it’s a clinical…please don’t tell me too much, kind of knowing. This understanding made me sad, because I would like to be known. I don’t know if that would change the “on the outside looking in” ness of my life, but it seems like it might. However, I don’t see this every happening.
Does make any sense to you?
Thanks
ruby
I think I was born on the outside. I don’t remember ever feeling “a part of.” Many visits to therapy and I’ve been told I “objectify” people, treat them as if they were machines, not people like me. But I treat myself the same way. I have many “close” friends, but only a couple that know everything. I work hard every day to find the “human” in the person I am with. I’m much better at it than I used to be, at least I think so. My boyfriends have said I’m distant, like I’m not there, especially in bed. I enjoy being with them and have a good time, but I am always fantasizing about someone, somewhere, somehow else. I don’t even like to look at them because it kills the moment. I wish there was someone who loved me for who I am!