Dear, Dear diary....

Diary Entry 7

August 3rd 2011: October 16th 2009

Dear diary, so my therapist (hi Dr Carter), asked me after reading my last diary entry at our last session, what my relationships with other people other than my family are like and to be honest I wasn't sure how to answer that question.

To be honest until he asked me I'd never really thought about it.  I guess I'd never needed to think about it being a kid and all, I just knew I had people who seemed to like me and some who didn't. However when I didn't really have an answer, he then asked me why I had picked Hannah and all the previous girlfriends that I had dated and turns out, as he spent most of the session explaining, they all had similar traits to my father.

Now I don't know what that means but he did explain that although I knew physically I wasn't 'safe' with our father, it was the longest and most prevalent relationship I'd ever known, so it had made the most impact on me mentally.  So apparently because of that, my subconscious, which I can't really control he explained, I was attracted to people who treated me in a similar way to our father.  In order to feel safe, as it was predictable and I knew how to control it and because I had been raised to believe that was how I should be treated in order to feel safe.

He went on to talk about how it's linked to the trauma JJ and I had endured over the years and my own feeling of self worth. That although I had been put into the position of protector for JJ, I had not experienced a non-volatile relationship with an adult before, so had grown up believing that love equalled to violence.

I guess it kind of makes sense because deep down I knew that these weren't great relationships, even when I was in them. I mean, knew that people shouldn't treat others the way that our father treated us or how my girlfriends had treated me, but I did believe that it was all I was good for and what I deserved and that no-one nice could ever love me as I was born an asshole.

It wasn't however how I chose my friends, I don't think. The relationship that I had with my friends mirrored that of mine and JJ's relationship. I had friends who were funny and caring and treated me like a human being. We banded together during game time and I trusted them all to have my back as much as I had theirs.

Dr Carter did ask if they were friends who I opened up to and spoke to about what went on with our father and the answer was a resounding no. I mean most of them knew about it and I guess I felt I didn't need to then tell them but he explained again that I didn't tell people because I had been made to believe that I deserved everything that I got, no matter how wrong I knew this was.  However sixteen years of being told it's a punishment you deserve will apparently do that to you.

I don't really know what I believe or think about any of it. I'm not denying he's not right, I mean he's a trained professional after all, but I don't like the idea that I want to be with someone like our father. That I would choose to be in a relationship like that and why I'd pick my friends for one reason but my girlfriend's for a whole other reason.

He did then ask me why I thought what I felt for Lana 'freaked' me out so much and that Dear Diary, I have no idea.

After the argument with Hannah at school she pretty much left me alone. There were a few incidences that she tried to either convince me to get back with her or just hurled abuse at me, but eventually she seemed to get bored when I wouldn't entertain either of these things.

Although I didn't actively avoid Lana any more, I still wasn't sure that having any relationship with her other than being friends was a good idea. Don't get me wrong it wasn't that I wasn't physically attracted to her and as I said before, just her presence seemed to make me smile but she seemed so different to the girls I had dated before and I felt she deserved someone better than me, someone that could give her all the things I couldn't, especially because I knew I'd never be able to tell her the real reasons why, which again had never really been an issue before as they either knew, didn't care to really know or we didn't date long enough for it to be a real issue but I didn't want to have to keep all this from her.