Fixated and Frightened

It's strange to have been living life based on someone else, and to suddenly try to live for oneself. There's this period of trying to determine what and who you are again. Trying to figure out what you actually enjoy and what you did for the sake of the other. And if you're anything like me, you did a lot of the latter.

But then to realize that you stuck around as long as you did not because of any particular qualities of the other, but that you finally reached a point where you could. A point where the infantile, reptilian brain is no longer in control, where the fear of abandonment does not compel you to leave before you can be left. You stayed to prove that you could, as much as anything else.

And once that settles in, and you begin to explore that behavior in your past... Realizing that you felt more and more deeply than you ever let on. How you sabotaged everything that was important to you and cut yourself off from the people you loved -- who loved you. Wondering if those people are still out there. Wondering if the memories are real or imagined. Even if it turns out that they are there, and they were real, what do you do about it?