Squatting Within a Corner of My Own Existence
In the Chaos of Enmeshment: Untangling Fear, Disorganization, and the Struggle for Self
This is a personal reflection, shared from the long arc of my own PSIP sessions. This is for those who have lived in similar rooms, and for those holding space for them.
So much of me has been redlining to meet the impossible onslaught of needs from the other, to seek shelter from their emotional storm while mistaking it for my own, while simultaneously trying to find space for my needs in a relationship that doesn’t have the sockets for my reach to plug into. The struggle of unraveling the tangled mess of my agonizing dilemma - I will die if you leave me and your existence annihilates me.
How impossible it has been to escape your grasp, the demand to sooth the screaming toddler that can only see itself. The reach that ran so deep into my tissue and nerves that no amount of physical distance has been able to sever, since you live inside me.
You own me.
I’ve fragmented myself over and over to keep you alive. And as much as I successfully function in this world — as hyper-independent as I’ve become, trying to outrun your unrelenting pull — my system is still enslaved by you, held by the grip of your unresolvable wounds.
But the initial blueprint of my home is finally coming into focus. The home is bigger than the forgotten attic that you generously gave me. And the home is confoundedly mine, but your needs, demands, violations and abuse pushed me into the attic as you dominated and occupied a home that was never yours to begin with. I’ve been in the attic my whole life — emaciated, frail, with mangled limbs with no sense of self or the environment around me, outside of knowing that I’m broken and the world is a terrorizing place. But now, the door is cracking open.
You’re so frail. But I took on your frailty. You’re filled with terror and shame, and I’ve been your attic — the place you hid all your unwanted goods from yourself.
I gave you my life.
Because how else would you survive? How else would I?
I gave you everything, and you gave me nothing.
Something is suppose to be there…I deserve something.
