The experience of emotional deprivation is harder to define than some of the other lifetraps. Often it is not crystallized into thoughts. This is because the original deprivation began so early, before you had the words to describe it. Your experience of emotional deprivation is much more the sense that you are going to be lonely forever, that certain things are never going to be fulfilled for you, that you will never be heard, never be understood.
Emotional deprivation feels like something is missing. It is a feeling of emptiness. Perhaps the image that most captures its meaning is that of a neglected child. Emotional deprivation is what a neglected child feels. It is a feeling of aloneness, of nobody there. It is a sad and heavy sense of knowledge that you are destined to be alone.
I’m so fucking angryfuriouslivid at John right now. We were supposed to talk and play tonight, but yet again, I get brushed aside for his friends or girlfriend. I have no other communication with him, save for the phonecalls.
It’s not just this time, it’s a whole bunch of times added up. And I’m left alone, again. This is the first time ever that he’s made me cry. And I’m not even sad. I’m just angry. I’m sweating. I can barely see through these tears.
At least I found out that I could show my feelings to him. He’s the only person with whom I don’t have to worry about being polite. I can raise my voice at him, and I don’t clam up like I do with most people.
Right now, I have no one. John’s the one person I can count on to talk to me when something goes wrong. No one else truly understands me. It’s completely devastating when it’s this person who pulls the rug out from under you.
Maybe I am sad. Maybe this makes me think of how I’m always a second priority to everyone I know. That I’ll be alone for the rest of my life. That it’ll always be like this because I’m fucking flawed and fucking defective and fucking unlovable in some way.
I wasn’t going to drive to nowhere tonight, but I think I will now. I just have to remember not to rest my foot on the pedal.
People don’t understand how fragile I am. That sometimes I have to fight to feel significant, that I have to convince myself that people would be sad if steered into a concrete pole and died.
Just because I try to be easy-going and understanding doesn’t mean I’m not important.
I’m a person too.
