Fear of abandonment

[g]

As some of you may remember, I was born and brought up in the UK. The second youngest of 5 siblings. Very humble, hardworking Italian parents.
Like many immigrant families, my parents' dream was to make enough money to be able to move back to their own country one day and saved what they could to build themselves a house back home. Every year, in July, my parents would lock up their shop and our house and off we'd all go in the car on a three day drive across Europe.
My parents both had many siblings, 6 or 7 each and I remember trying to count my cousins once but never being able to get a definitive number.
Summer holidays meant huge get togethers, family excursions and a long round of hellos followed by a long round of goodbyes before we left.
For me and my siblings Italy was a holiday destination that had the added benefit of reuniting with loved ones.

The unspoken promise was that my parents would never move back for good because my siblings and I were so integrated in the Uk. So when my brother was killed in a car crash when I was 16 the tragedy meant that huge changes would take place.
My mother and father had bought my brother the car he had died in and blamed themselves for not protecting him and being able to keep him safe. Where we lived became hell on earth because that's where my bro had died. So the solution was to bury my brother in Italy, put the house and business up for sale and run back to the relative safety of their own country.
My two elder sisters had already left school, my youngest sister was too small to know any better. So I was the only one to rebel.
I started planning my escape almost immediately. Was probably thinking wedding bells when I started going out with X a matter of weeks later ( my current POA ), rather than grieving properly I was concentrating on getting away from a seriously depressed and delusional mother and a father who seemed to have turned into a deaf mute.
I remember being furious when I was told on the day of my brother's funeral that there would be no university for me and that I'd be moving away with the rest of the family.

I knew already that there was no way that that was going to happen. It made me even more determined to have a life of my own and to make my own decisions.
I can see now that I had a massive fear of abandonment and that I was going to abandon my family before they would abandon me. And so it was. It took my parents three years to sell up but I had already moved away the year before.

I went thru terrible homesickness and almost had a nervous breakdown when I first moved away but I did it.
30 yrs on, my sisters still all live in flats in the block my parents built. I'm the only one that eventually managed to leave the nest even tho I moved back in with them for another ten years after university.
Codependency and how it crippled me is what made me move away once and for all.
I tend to look for an escape route when I feel threatened by abandonment and I can see how that has been a recurring pattern in my life.

[g]

And of course my brother had left me. He was my idol and my mentor. What good was a broken family to me? I knew I would never be able to fix it so what was the point in staying?
Too many reminders of the pain and suffering if I stayed. No it just wasn't for me - I had to run for the hills as soon as that was possible.

When my h got sick I had the same reaction. I thought my dreamlife was coming to an end. I wasn't really thinking about him and his brain tumour but about me and my own selfish plans for the future. What was going to happen to me? What about my dreams? Who was going to provide for me and take care of ME?

I put on a brave face and earned everybody's admiration for being strong and taking care of my h throughout his ordeal but I was just wallowing in all that praise. I was thriving on the attention.
Then , when things calmed down and I realised my h wasn't going anywhere I found refuge in the arms of the first man who showed me any attention. That was my highschool bf from 30 year before. By some weird coincidence he was waiting in the wings for me again at atime when I was most vulnerable and needy. Ready to rip that teenage wound wide open again
G

[primrose]

That's powerful stuff G. Being the one in a family who moves away can be incredibly stressful. When I broke from my family in my late 20s, confronted them with their abuse and cut contact with them, I got so ill my hair started to fall out. I punished myself. I felt WRONG for having left the family system. I was the black sheep for a long time in my family. My parents threw a wide net growing up, so my brothers and sister have done a lot of interesting creative things while being stuck in that net, but they're still stuck. My 3 siblings are still held fast by my parents rules and beliefs. I can't say I'm a completely free thinker, I am still hugely influenced by my parents thinking, but I do have access to other ways of looking at the world now and I'm very grateful for that.

I often wonder in family systems which child it is that gets into recovery? Why one child and not another? I know a lot of firsts in the rooms, but that may be because I'm a first myself and gravitate towards them. And there are lots of thirds as the third is usually the scapegoat child and usually has substance addictions. I don't know. I wonder if these things effect whether people are able to challenge the family. Although my family initially cut me off with hatred and rage when I made my own life, now that 10 years have passed they accept me much more easily and my father admitted he thought I was very brave to stand up to them all and tell them to get lost when I did.

It takes a lot of courage to forge a life away from a family that doesn't want its children to seperate. I know what you mean about looking for an escape route when things get tough, I have the same pattern, but I also think you can be proud G that you did make your own life despite it being so hard on you physically. P.

[serenity]

Oh goodness me G I am going through a very similar issue myself today. Your story gives me strength to believe that I can cope with my dysfunctional family by taking care of MY needs first.

I have so much resentment towards my mother that i've never really owned as i feel that she was sick so it wasn't her fault. She brought me up to be codependent on her whilst at the same time abandoning me when she became ill with depression. My brother was always her blue eyed boy no matter how much distress he caused and boy did he cause my family pain.

A good way of seeing how avoidant my mother is and in her own world is by explaining how she saw her father who she put on a pedestal and idolised. Its only recently that i found out he was an alcoholic and had affairs. She will not believe this and totally dismisses it.

When i had my most recent suicidal depression I asked her to tell my psychiatrist that she more than likely had bipolar but she didn't. I realised that she had a bipolar illness and found her lithium which i had over dosed on and went back to my psyc and told him that I think i need medication for bipolar. Only then did she admit she was on the lithium and I was put on it straight away.

Never has she talked to me about being diagnosed with bipolar. I had to ask her about how she managed with her illness to help myself. I feel so abandoned by her. Even when i was honest with her and told her i was suicidal she told me to go and buy a book and a candle and just get on with life.

Yesterday on my 30th bday she just couldn't be there for me either. She has never been able to admit when she's in the wrong as she has to be seen as 'perfect'. When i told her how upset i was that she was an hour late for my bday day out she said, 'Well, if i have messed up like you say i have i'm sorry'. She could not apologise to me.

She then accused me of not being a christian as i wouldn't forgive her when she hadn't actually apologised. This made me so mad and i said how dare you use that against me. Half an hour later i get a very absuive text from my brother saying i need to apologise to mum or he's never speaking to me again. This is the brother that physically atttacked me and my 6 month old god daughter 3 years ago so there is really no love lost there but that fact that my mum went crying to him knowing that we don't get on makes me even madder.

Lastly just to add insult to injury my father didn't even wish me a happy bday and now I am at a crossroads about what to do. I work with him so i am very tied to the family and I'm not sure I can go on working for him after seeing how badly my family have let me down.

I really needed to read this post and ask for help.

Vee

[iwillsurvive]

Greta. Thanks for sharing more of your story. There's so much in it. I've been grieving over the last few days and when I read what you went through when your brother died it really touched me. You must have felt abandoned by your parents as they became wrapped up in their loss. I was also the one who moved away from my family and I have received a lot of backlash from family members about that. I moved even farther away three years ago and have been treated with utter hostility by some siblings and my father before he died last year. I was told I was running away and breaking up the family. What makes that more absurd is that I'm 52 but somehow I am running away from home. My family is also not happy because I broke the no talk rule. Prim its good to read your posts again. I am number four of seven children and I have played hero and scapegoat and rescuer and fixer. I also stayed away from my family for five years when dealing with abuse issues in my 30s. My therapist at the time said it was a necessary separation because of my enmeshment with them -- especially my mom. I resigned my position as her counselor and began to work on my own issues. My mom seethed with anger and I'm sure felt abandoned but she later apologized for dumping her problems on me when I was a child. She refused to discuss the abuse by my father however and told me she couldn't handle it. That did not surprise me. Before my mom died in 2003 she said she hoped I had some good memories from my childhood. I reassured her that I did. She was a loving person and did the best she could.

[g]

I'm glad this thread is helping. I sometimes feel I've been so blessed in life and hate to hog space

When I did leave home just before I turned 18, I moved far enough away to not go home at night but close enough to jump on a train or three!to get home at the weekend. I got thru Fresher's week okay and then my facade started to crumble. Made it thru another week and then headed back. I hadn't been eating and had been nauseous for over a week. I was in a real fog to be honest and questioning every choice I had made. My steady bf hadn't got into my uni and was further north. Things weren't going to well and I was desperately needy and clingy. I was writing him God knows how many letters a day and not getting much back.
When my parents picked me up, I just broke down and criedas soon as they asked me how I was. My sister who was 16 mths older than me had always been weaker than me and been bullied at school, suffered depression, was anorexic blablabla so mum knew to take me to the doctor's and put me on medication. So valium it was. My mum and dad also told me there was nothing to be upset about, that I could drop out of uni and of course there would be work for me in their cafe.
Well that made me pull myself ttogether pretty fast. I was not going to give in. When the weekend was over I gritted my teeth, got back on that train and headed back to my halls of residence.
It wasn't a walk in the park and I crossed weeks off the calendar just to get to the end of term. Then another. And another after that.
My parents actually left the country at the end of my first term in 2nd year. We all got on a train and travelled across Europe in December. 6 of us carrying 17 suitcases. After that I flew back to see my parents at every holiday.
Split up with my bf in my third year which I was spending at my parents but rather than grieve my r/s with the love of my life (my current poa hates him to this day) I pretended I was okay and soldiered on yet again. Met my future H on the rebound and got addicted to him instead.
I still haven't posted much about my dysfunctional r/s with my steady. Maybe because I can't really believe that I put up with him for so many years and missed so many opporttunities because of him. I suppose I will have to look into the humiliation and shame surrounding that abandonment. Got all the 'told you so's' from my mother and the 'I knew he never really loved you's' for years. I got the putdowns for believing that a posh guy like him could want somebody common like me. Will save that for a less emotional day.

My mother never liked my h and he doesn't like her. That's why I left my parents' place for good. I couldn't take their arguments or either of them constantly bitching to me about the other. Oh the blame shifting and the pettiness of it all. A rather violent discussion between my siblings' h's and my h was the last straw. Money and inheritance was the topic and the choice was either divorce or move away. I chose the latter but had to go thru another lengthy depression for having taken my two beautiful daughters away from their aunts, grandparents and little cousins and moing them into a horrible poky flat just to keep my h happy.
Ugh. I was horrible to everyone then. An angry frustrated woman whose 16yr-old inside was screaming for her mummy again. Lost her again. Abandoned her again and caused her so much pain over effin money just beause her h seems to think that he can tell my parents that our inheritance was to be discussed amongst ourselves and that they, my parents, and owners of the property, were to take a back seat.
I moved away but to this day, 15 yrs later, I refuse to talk to my h about MY parents' money or property or what will be MINE one day.
He doesn't like it but my parents lost a child for God's sake , and have done everything in their power to help us build our house , take care of it, care for us. Endless list of what my parents have done for me my h and our girls. But h insists he has received nothing. And that he owes nobody anything. Not even a thank you.
Ugh. This still hurts a lot and it will go on hurting if I don't let go of it
G

[g]

That's it isn't it? We've all been running like crazy.
Phoenix your situation with your daughter touches me every time you write about it. People have asked me when my kids leave home what will I do.
They re certainly not talking about leaving and three years ago when everything in my life and theirs was turned on its head, I wanted to run as far away as I could from their bickering and laziness and selfishness.
My insanity meant they suddenly had to keep the family going cos I totally zoned out with my poa. I could barely function.
I actually love being with my daughters now. They help out a lot and altho they still think I'm not the full shilling as we say, they love me and I love them. My h is the outsider unfortunately. My youngest said she absolutely detests him now. I'm trying to get her to understand how sick he is but she sees my dad and my mun and how they still go out of their way to treat us all with love and respect. They're not perfect but they do their best. Uneducated country folk who used to sleep 6 to a bed when they were young. I really admire my parents. My dad is 79 and will peel me a slice of apple without my asking and put it in my plate. Not just for me but my sisters and their kids too. He's always been like that. But my h had to struggle to survive with his 6 siblings first come first served was the philosophy in his house. And if you got home late for lunch and there was nothing left well tough.
My h has his childhood wounds and I try to get he girls to see that but its getting harder and harder for my youngest to accept that
G

[knowlove]

G thanks for sharing more of your story. Reading your story, one can almost see how this all played out and why you are an LA.
Funny enough I too left home early. I got pregnant by H (and to this wonder if somehow subconsciously I did it on purpose) and we married 2 weeks into my 18th birthday. I was so happy to be getting away from my mother who had been so crazy, abusive and obsessive for years. My H and I wanted a certain wedding date and I have no doubt because it was close to Christmas that when she told me it had to be a week earlier it was because SHE wanted it that way (said places for receptions were booked on date I wanted). The scary part to this whole thing is I was seriously thinking of breaking up with H because he was so clingy and needy (still is!). He has no idea to this day I was thinking this. Once I realized I was pregnant all that went out the window, like I had never even considered it. I think I saw my ticket out. I loved being a wife and mother but my H was always out every weekend partying with his buddies and years later finding out he was having affairs. But I was happy being a mother and taking care of my family. I wanted to have what I did not have at home. I made sure my kids knew I loved them them and always spent time with them doing fun things. I was determined to be the mother I never had.
I find I ran to POA's when my home life felt threatened for whatever reason. H not being able to handle things well at work, when I found out H cheated, feeling scared of whatever it was at the time. Not sure why this past time. No idea. I too know I definitely fear abandonment and when I feel it could be happening is when I freak out. When I feel scared and angry is the worst. Trying to control my own feelings and stay lucid and having common sense about the issues help. Not always possible. I am trying to find the "timeline" of when I started these fantasies and looking at how events in my life have contributed and shaped who I am. Looking at when I run and why. Want to find out what it is that makes me feel the need to escape or feel the need for another man to want me. I know it will all come together eventually. Funny though how we are all finding we have lots in common from childhood to running away early on.