Like a Little Girl

Suddenly the flood gates broke and I began saying the things I've been holding back for months. My father responds with the stuff he's been holding back. Suddenly I'm 10 years old again and I'm sobbing. I feel myself get light headed and the words begin to choke me again. I hear him and respond in my head, but all that comes out is tears. A constant flow of tears and my head spins. I occasionally try to defend myself or make him understand, but mostly I just cry. I feel trapped, and little. I am thankful when he ends it and says he is leaving. I wanted to stop arguing, stop hurting each other much before that, but again the words just stuck there. They swirl through my head at such a rate that I can hardly make sense of them, but they never escape my lips. As he leave I feel myself crumble. Once shin feeling like I have failed them. Feeling like I have failed me. Like I have just plain failed. I cry harder. I am still 10 years old, I feel disloyal, dishonest and cowardly. What I want most, is what every sad little girl wants. I want someone to scoop me up, wrap me in warmth, and make me feel safe. I look around and find no one there. Now I have failed and it has left me alone, unloved, and crying like a child while I wait for someone to come rescue me. But I am not a child, and knowing this makes me feel even more like I am not ok. Like there MUST be something wrong with me. Why am I crying like a child? Why am I sitting there alone in a dark store? Why am I so unlovable that I deserve to be sitting there alone when I have a husband, parents, and children, a family? What on Earth is wrong with me? What have I done that makes it so hard for someone to be compassionate toward me?

These feelings and questions overwhelm me, and by the time my husband arrives, I am beyond needy. I am a little girl, sitting in the dark, alone, scared, and feeling unimportant, unloved. He does not see this little girl though. The one who is scared and alone. What he sees is a grown woman who he expects to know and understand that he loves her. So the girl is once again alone, feeling like she is unlovable, unsafe, unimportant.

I tell the little girl. I love her. I hear her, and she gets quiet. But I know she is still inside of me. Still full of self doubt, and fear, and blame. She is still scared and lonely, just praying and waiting for someone to wrap her in warmth and safety.

The Apple Doesn't Fall Far From the Tree

I watch my daughter fidgeting in her seat as we go over her spelling words. I see her cover her ears and shake whenever there is a loud noise. I recognized her panicked expressions, her need for distraction, and her heighten sensitivity to what's around her. We do not celebrate Halloween, we DO NOT use auto flush toilets, we avoid masks of all kinds, and until this year tall slides or play tubes were completely out! Every teacher, and several of her doctors have said what I already know. My daughter has an anxiety problem. Since she is only 7 I will not call it a disorder. However, seeing as her father and I having both been diagnosed with, and are being treated for, general anxiety disorder, I feel certain this is not a phase. I see her suffering, feeling genuine fear and anxiety and I want to make it better. I want to fix it for her.

I know all to well how she feels. The crawling out of your own skin feeling anxiety gives you. The butterflies in your stomach over the littlest things. I experience it too, while I have tried to hide my anxiety from her since she was a baby, I know that she sees my reactions, and she feels my tension. The worst part, and the hardest part for me to control, is my heighten sensitivity. The littlest noises, or motions will make me literally feel jittery, nervous, or tense. Oh and crowds, large crowds of people will make me feel like my head is going to explode. So, amusement parks, malls, festivals, concerts, all anxiety ridden for me, and in turn, for her. Once I feel like crawling out of my skin, my sensativity to being touched also increases. I feel so much guilt when my child wants a hug or a snuggle and I pull away. I seats try to explain that mommy is having a hard time right now, or mommy needs some space, but I see her expression drop each time and it breaks my heart. And it breaks my heart to know that some day she will understand EXACTLY how I am feeling.