Not enough love in the world...

There was a song out in the 80s called "Not Enough Love in the World" by Don Henley.

I've always considered this my theme song.

I attributed it to my horoscope, rather than any emotional problem.

Thanks to this book Codependent No More, I've started to re-examine my position on the matter.

What I always thought was an enormous heart to love might just be an enormous need.

I can trace it back to my childhood, and the author calls this "unfinished business".

I've been pretty open with my childhood experiences and how I never really felt nurtured by my mother.

My dad was considerably older so he stayed at home with me while she worked.  What little time we did spend together was usually disciplinary.  My mother was very strict, almost militant. 

I see bits and pieces of that in my own mothering, although I have endeavored to err on the other side of that coin.  I want to give my children choices, not orders.  Unfortunately, that's come at the cost of the discipline, because I wanted to be more loving to my kids than my mother was to me.  I mistook my need for their acceptance as their love for me, and have been a doormat in their discipline.

In other words, I fold like a cheap lawn chair.

But that's a topic for another day.  I've actually felt more positive about my mothering skills of late.  No need to beat myself up for the mistakes I've made.

Which is really the crux of this blog.

I've decided that there isn't enough love in this world to fill the hole I have inside. I have long tried to escape into someone else so that I can fill this hole, but really no one can do that.  Not Steven, not my mom, not anyone.  Not even God.

Before you try to correct me, I'd like to point out even God needs our help to love us.  If we consistantly reject him or get in his way to do his will in our lives, what he can do for us is limited.

That is the catch 22 of free will.

The fact of the matter is I can't keep searching for this overwhelming love outside because I need to apply it from the inside out.

The problem is, I don't know how to love properly.

And because I can't give it, I can't receive it.

Again, I think it's generational.

My mom was born in 1937, right at the end of the depression.  Her family was poor because her mother - who had a lot ofmental issues - did not know how to take care of finances. 

Her mother didn't know much of anything, this poor woman was so abused by HER parents (locked in closets and things of that nature).

Anyway, she was militant with my mom and her siblings, never allowing them anything other than study and work.  My mom doesn't know how to swim, skate, bike or even climb a tree.

Her childhood - what she had of one - was constantly in turmoil.

Especially when her folks divorced, something very rare in that generation.

It set the stage for what kind of childhood I would have.

Militant, religious and unloving.

Of course, my mom would not consider it an unloving atmosphere.  She equated love with providing for her children so they never had to sleep in gutters like her brother did.  And that we didn't, and I even had a pretty good childhood materially speaking, is a success in her mind.

But she didn't know how to relate to me because her mother never related to her.

The only reason she was close to my sister was because my sister was older.

My mom and my sister both do not know how to deal with kids.  Best seen and not heard, be quiet and do what you're told, don't talk back, etc.

So when the time came that I needed nurturing (after my dad died) and I didn't get it, I searched for it elsewhere.

Like a lot of girls who lose their dads early on in their childhood, I sought out older men for attention and affection.

I mistook both of those things for love.

And I was used like a dirty dish rag because of my need for what I perceived as love.

Just like you can't plant corn and get apples, you can't plant need and get love.  All I ever got was more need.

So often need and love are polar opposites of each other.

Need storms over boundaries that love respects.

Need relies on guilt to get its way, love insists on fairness.

Need denies deprivation where love knows how to say no.

Need clings to people, relationships and things when love learns how to let go and say goodbye.

I would be so plugged into that need that abandonment really became a major issue.  I was so afraid of losing that connection I would do and sacrifice anything to keep it.  Self esteem was one of the first casualties.

The only way any of this will change is if I now nurture myself so that I will know the difference between love and need.

I believe that God had it right in 1 Corinthians 13 on what love really is.

4 Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful; 5 it is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6 it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. 7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 8 Love never ends.

I'm sure I don't have to tell you all that I have not regarded myself by these standards.  Therefore it is logical to conclude I don't regard anyone else by these standards either.

I beat myself up for all the wrongs I've done in my life.  If you think the mental ticker I keep for everyone else's mistakes is long, it is shadowed in comparison to the one I keep of my own. 

I was brought up to believe that humility and self loathing were one in the same.  Loving one's self is vanity or selfish.  Religion tells us that is so.  I've pretty much come to the conclusion that religion is a bunch of hooey on a good day.

Therefore I have to push past all the emotional barricades and the religious brainwashing and get to where I truly believe God wants me to be.

Learning how to apply 1 Corinthians 13 to the person who really needs it the most.

Myself.