Monday, January 9, 2017

The Ties That Bond

I'm obsessed with Attachment Theory. I have been since grad school. The longer I practice, the longer I live, and the longer I love, I am convinced it is the sun around which every heart orbits.

It started with my Attachment Theory professor. If anyone was going to teach Attachment Theory, it should have been her. She was the embodiment of the good enough mother she taught us so much about. Her voice was like liquid gold. When she spoke I was mesmerized. I often felt like climbing into her lap (and sometimes falling asleep which was probably not such a good thing). Everything about her was a combination of smooth and soothing. She was smoothing.

As she talked about John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth, it was as if she were reading me a bedtime story. Attachment theory, as taught by Professor S made me downright googy-eyed. It probably also had something to do with the unspeakable grief I was freshly carrying at that time. After all, I was pretty broken and here was this angelic, maternal figure talking to me about how I got attached to what I had lost in the first place.

I had lunch with one of my college housemates the other day. We probably haven't seen each other in over 10 years and yet we live across town from each other. It's my fault. My brother was killed the fall after I graduated from college. He was a freshman at my Alma Mater...

- Alma Mater: (Latin: alma "nourishing/kind", mater "mother"; is an allegorical Latin phrase for a university or college. In modern usage, it is a school or university which an individual has attended. The phrase is variously translated as "nourishing mother", "nursing mother", or "fostering mother" suggesting that a school provides intellectual nourishment to its students...") - 

and that's where he died. In the aftermath of that tire-screeching moment, my secure ties to my Alma Mater - my four-year "Foster Mater" where I was socially, emotionally, psychologically, and intellectually nurtured - had shattered. My university family, and all that had felt right and good and warm and fuzzy in my contained little universe, was no more.. 

My internal air-bag had been deployed. For years (and probably, on some level, even today) I kept that air-bag with me, using it as a shield against the hurt and the betrayal, the loss of security, sense of safety, and of so much of what I loved. My anchors, my tethers had been torn from me. I was bereft, adrift, floating through time and space holding tight to that airbag. Now that those ties which had bonded me to a vibrant life, to my friends, and to my future had been severed, I use(d) it to hide. I was bleeding out and needed to stay away.

And so I walk(ed) through life for a while, air-bag deployed, subconsciously avoiding deep contact with all the things, all the people, all the places I once so intensely loved. Sure, I could talk to them on Facebook where I could strategically watch them from a safe distance, as if through a veil, behind a curtain. But I feared going near them. Close proximity would be akin to staring into the sun. No way would I subject myself to that sort of burn.

But at some point, perhaps, my air bag sprang a leak? Something seemed to have shifted as I set out the other day to see my former housemate, the sister-like person with whom, for years, I had grown-up, laughed, cried, fought, screamed, hated, lived, and loved. When I saw her, the sensory response was beyond words. It was magnetic. My airbag had deflated, replaced by an intense force of re-connection, of remembering, of familiarity, of attachment - and it was completely beyond my control.

Which brings me back to Attachment Theory. Somehow, I was still linked to her and to our moment in time when we became young adults. The energy was palpable. In that first moment, during that first hello hug, I was engulfed by love and a sense of security. Those seemingly severed ties and broken strings were actually still intact. Somehow, they had weathered my storm. My grief had not destroyed my ability to love. In fact, the love actually felt stronger, flooding through me - like a tidal wave - after which it then settled into a peaceful inner pool where I could float once again, sit across the table from her, drink our coffee, and connect.

She felt like home.

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