Preparing for my next EMDR

 So I will have my next EMDR session on Friday from Sapporo. I’ve decided that I am going to work on my abandonment in romantic relationships. My last session was on abandonment in my very early childhood and as I met with Eric on Sunday and talked to him again last night, I am working through these feelings and I find them very relevant.

Last night I cried in my shower as I recalled the day when Angel proposed to me. I don’t even remember the exact date because it just didn’t mean that much to me. How ironic. I used to be such a romantic and never bothered to remember the day he proposed, our first date, and the day we got legally married. I was 29, absolutely beautiful and lonely. I was defeated by all the failed relationships I had. I went to his apartment to replace his bedsheet, because he had been using a really beat up one provided by his landlord and I got a new one so that it could fit better. It was the day before he had to leave for a work trip to KL and I just wanted to see him. When he saw that I changed his bedsheet, he proposed to me. A part of me sank that my proposal just happened like that—it was a result of me performing and taking care of him, not that he wanted to give something to me. But I still said yes, because I believed at that point in my life no one else would choose me. If I wanted to stop being alone I’d have to say yes. After the proposal, I cried a bit, but it wasn’t because I was going to marry the man of my dreams, but because I was finally not alone.

In my 2-hour phone call with Eric last night, I told him that the abandonment with my husband became much more constant after I was pregnant with my second child. There were times when I was verbally attacked by a total stranger, sometimes even out of racism or sexism, he would do nothing, say nothing even when he was there at the moment, and nothing after the incident as well. Then Eric told me that’s when he felt that my husband should have no place in this world. He told me that whenever someone mistreats his wife, he’d confront them to a point where his wife actually would get angry at him for being so confrontational. When I heard this, I can’t remember if I had said it out loud but I wanted to say that no one in this world has done that for me. It made me feel that I am just not worth protecting and it’s probably just my destiny that I cannot change. And it just broke me. The following day I felt pretty depressed mostly because of this and didn’t want to do much in Sapporo. I walked past a Louis Vuitton store and I just couldn’t resist the urge to buy another LV bag and spend some big bucks on myself. Yes, I bought it.

When I was 19, I had an online relationship with a guy from Kansas. He was 21, a high school drop out, totally broke, but really smart. We didn’t meet on some dating website or anything like that. I had a blog online and he came across my blog and we started our conversation like that. Even though we had never met in person, but we really loved each other. He was in so much denial and he kept telling me how fucked up our situation was and that I should be dating and hooking up with men in my life. I wanted to go visit him in Kansas but he wouldn’t let me. I did date other men and made out with other men in my life and eventually fell for one unavailable man after another. This guy from Kansas and I almost met when I was about to study in the City of Power. At that point we were only 80 miles away from each other. And yet, he dropped all contact with me again because he thought I was depressed. Eventually when we reconnected again in 2012, he told me he really did love me back then but our distance made it too painful for him to admit that. Then we had a pledge to marry each other by the time we turned 30 if we were still single. He said he’d move to wherever I was living, even if it was somewhere as expensive as San Francisco. 

I had dated many men before I got married, but I never had penetrated sex until I started dating Angel, because he was safe. Before Angel, I only had one “official” boyfriend from 2008 to 2009, but even with him we didn’t end up having penetrated sex because for some reason, I always knew he wasn’t 100% mine. He was in touch with a girl from his hometown who he later married after we broke up. All other men I dated were never committed; we kissed and made out and had oral sex but all of them left. I may have been the one leaving only with two of them; the other couple dozens of men all left on their own. They ghosted me.

Of all the men I’ve been with, the one that hurt me the most was Ken. Our thing dragged on for about two to three years, and yet when I thought we’d finally kiss for the first time and it’d be the most magical thing in the world, he got me almost completely naked without kissing me once. We spent the night together in each other’s arms but he just couldn’t allow himself to be vulnerable. Eventually he married a woman that had all the credentials he asked for. That made me feel that the only reason he could not be intimate with me was that I had no money and my family was broke. Seeing him marrying her made me believe that I should also just marry something who’s checked the financial box and a part of my dignity is associated with money. That’s why whenever I feel bad I’d look at how much money I have and buy something.