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My entire life, I’ve avoided any and all relationships, from romantic to friendships to even keeping family at a distance (I’m honestly not sure how I ended up married except that I was ready for a change at that time in my life when I met my wife).  No doubt, this avoidance was due in large part to anxiety and inferiority, inadequacy and unworthiness as well as mistrust and fear of others, but it also was due to an avoidance of my confusion and fear over death and loss as well as my existential confusion and angst.  It’s as though I entered this existence very much against my will and came kicking and screaming the whole way through, hell the umbilical cord was wrapped around my neck coming out as though I was holding on, refusing to exist.  I wasn’t breathing for the first few moments of my life.  Then once I was here and it was clear there was no going back, nothing but silence, a steadfast refusal to live out my purpose, even as it was being slowly laid out before me… My paternal grandfather passed away while I was 7 months in utero.  This was almost never mentioned throughout my childhood, save for maybe once or twice.  Despite its lack of mention, I have no doubt this had a profound effect on my father and a massive influence on the emotional environment I was raised in in my earliest years.  Whether it played subconsciously into my confusion and fear around losing those I love to death, I dont know.  All I remember, and it was more secondary to my shyness, social anxiety, and general fear of people, was having a huge fear of losing the most important relationships to me, those at the time being my parents and sister, and that being a part of why I resisted forming meaningful relationships.  Arguably, it could have been this fear of loss and existential angst that was even more central to my avoidance of relationships and that this lack of connection is what led to my introversion, shyness, anxiety and unworthiness.  May never know but it’s worth noting.  

This is a pattern that needs to be resolved as part of my new story.  When I think of how much more I’ve lost or missed out on by living this way, I’m filled with anger, regret and sorrow.  And grief.  This year has seen grief, or perhaps not grief but something, play a central role in my experience.  The grief hasn’t so much been personal loss but a resurgence of some buried pain that’s been awakened by the loss of 2 children my own kids ages to 2 families near to me in some way.  And it occurs to me now that their deaths are challenging my own existential crises.   I spent my childhood dreaming most nights of my own death.  I remember dying in fires, falling to my death several times, being chased by something unseen to my eventual death, and being eaten by sharks.  I not only prayed for it but fervently believed it would come to pass.  Never did I imagine seeing my forties.  Now to see 2 kids full of promise and massive potential pass on and leave huge holes behind them has shaken me to the core this past year.  Last night, I had a dream my daughter had cancer.  I recall very little of the dream except that when I told someone in the dream about her cancer, I did so with an unfamiliar feeling.  It wasn’t fear or grief.  It was almost joy or pride or maybe gratitude, not sure, just that it was confusing as hell.  But the love I felt for her in the dream was every bit as strong as what I feel for her in waking life.  So this feeling didn’t make sense, still doesn’t.  I dont know what I felt and I’m afraid to analyze it.  What I do know is that my children are the most important relationships in my life.  I don’t avoid them.  I don’t play small or shy with them as I continue to do with others.  They get all of me and I feel more complete when I’m just in a state of being with them.  They help me see the innocence in others but also inspire my ego to fear for them….  Not sure where to go with this, or what it means.  Maybe I need to relate to others from my inner child to theirs.  Not sure.  Just needed to be expressed.