It’s better to love me from a distance

“I think I inherited [my father’s] tendency to want to love people from a distance,” I said to my mom on the phone the other day.

“I’m not good at keeping in touch with people, either.” She responded.

A double whammy. Two parents that don’t know how to keep in touch. Two parents that keep most people at arm's length.

One parent that’s satisfied with letting me come and go, who trusted me to wander the world on my own as soon as I could confidently waddle on my own two feet. A parent that let me fall into the first-born child cliché: emotionally independent, mature-for-her-age, a leader because they had no other option.

And another parent that never let me in in the first place.

I’m not making excuses. But I’ll take one if you’re handing them out.

My grandfather on my father’s side always lived far away from his family. Not a great distance, but far enough away that going to see him was an event and one that only happened around holidays. Not a terribly obscure thing: people are allowed to move away. People often have families all over the country or world. But it was no secret that he didn’t see his own children, and in turn grandchildren, all that often. They were grown. They didn’t need him. He could do as he pleased.

And then my own father did the same thing. Moved just far enough away that he wasn’t easily reachable—that you couldn’t just pop in for a visit. Not that we had that kind of relationship to begin with. But it did make reconnecting with him that much harder. Like father, like son, I guess.

My father has a bad habit of telling me that he wants to visit—that he misses me and would love to see me more often—but his follow-through is lackluster. And I don’t even blame him. I know he looks at me and can’t help but feel remorse, the same way I look at him and still feel a sliver of betrayal. It’s hard to reach out and see each other when the visits usually end in feelings of melancholy, even if the visits are perfectly pleasant.

He’s happy to love me from a distance, and vice versa I guess.

I’ve been feeling like a bad friend lately. I've been feeling guilt for all of the people I don't call or text. For all the messages that get late replies. For all of the plans I've let fall through. I have people all over that I love and I don’t know how to communicate with. I don’t know how to bridge the gap between my desire for connection and my tendency for isolation.

I’ve been feeling like a bad friend lately, because I’ll happily love people from a distance, too.

How much of this is a learned behaviour and how much of this is the result of poor mental health?

How much of this is just who I am and how much of this is the result of living in survival mode?

I do have a tendency to isolate, especially when the going gets tough. When I’m low and not doing well, I don’t have it in me to connect. Partially because every social encounter feels like a performance and partially because I don’t want people to know when I’m struggling. I’m like a wounded dog, wandering off alone into the woods to die. I’ll tell you all about my struggles, but hell if I’ll show you what it looks like when I’m going through it.

And yeah, lately I’ve been struggling. I’ve had more bad days than good in the past…I can’t even recall. I don’t know how to answer the dreaded “how are you?” question that kicks off almost every social interaction. I can smile and say “good” at work or in public, but when someone I have a level of trust with asks, I hesitate. Some days, I simply don’t know. I simply haven’t checked in with myself to know how to honestly answer that question. Other days, I just can’t bring myself to tell them the truth. I don’t want them to worry, I worry enough for us all. I don’t want their sympathy, I already feel bad enough. I don’t want to off-load any of the weight onto them, they don’t deserve it. I want to carry it all myself.

It’s better to love me from a distance.

A couple of weeks ago my therapist called me out for filtering my responses to her. She told me that she could tell that I was picking and choosing my responses carefully, never sharing the full scope of whatever I was saying or feeling.

“I do that with everyone,” I admitted, as if that may make her feel better.

“That doesn’t lead to very authentic conversations then, does it?”

“I don’t know if I’m authentic with anyone,” I blurted before I could think much of it. A long pause followed as I held back tears. Crying was something I had yet to do in therapy, and I was surprised by the sudden onset of it. “I don’t know if anyone actually knows me.”

I never thought I would ever admit that. It was a truth that had been bouncing around in my head for quite some time. I did filter. I did pick and choose what I would show people. I did have different versions of myself that I would present depending on who I was with. I did try my best to control how people viewed me. What they knew about me. It was another way of keeping a distance. And from that distance, people couldn’t poke holes in my façade. They couldn’t judge.

I do want to be a whole person. I’m tired of all of the halves that I’m made up of. They’re getting hard to keep track of.

I do want to be loved up close. But I have years of bad habits to break. Years of baggage to set down and unpack.

And years of distance to travel back through.