Hello, I'm a Cling-on!

Jar is currently at his MOB station in the US, which means he still has access to every means of communication we have here at home. Once he goes across the pond, all that will change though. Right now they are not sure exactly how they will communicate with home, if they will have internet service, etc. From what I have heard, the internet service over there is pretty shoddy anyways!

In order for us to prepare for that transition, he and I have been limiting how much we communicate with each other. We are currently trying to talk once a day before bed and text once in the morning and once in the afternoon.

To be completely honest, it had been driving me absolutely insane!!!

You see, I am what I would call a “clinger”, or as Jar likes to call it “Cling-on.” I’m the girl who dropped all her friends for some stupid guy in high school. I’m the one who would completely rearrange her schedule just so she could “accidentally” run into someone, the one who was maniacally texting every five minutes to see what they were doing, the one who freaked out when I didn’t get a prompt response. By the time I met Jar, I had no social life (unless you count a newborn as a social life), no friends, and the social skills of an awkward teenager. Picture it kind of like this:

Fast forward until now.
I am here, alone, a clinger without a cling-ee?

I stress out when Jar doesn’t respond now, because my brain tells me he is capable of responding, but doesn’t, which it somehow translates to him not wanting to talk to me, or he’s doing something he shouldn’t be, or blah blah blah, you get the picture. Even worse, I don’t have a lot of friends around to do things with to distract me from these thoughts, or to share my psychotic thoughts with to begin with! AAAGGGHHH!!! It’s horrifying, I know.

SO, in trying to curb my self-destructive thoughts, I have been attempting to find the root of my neediness. Why do I need to talk to Jar all freaking day long? Why did I segregate myself from the rest of the world when I was in relationships previously? Why am I so afraid of having friends? Why can’t I reach out to people like a normal person and go do normal people things?

I keep coming back to the same answer for all of these questions.

I have never felt good enough.

There, I said it. I am insecure. I am fearful. I have been hurt before. I have hurt people before and seen what I am capable of in my darkest hour, so what’s stopping anyone else from doing that to me?

Whew, that was a little deep there. And the last sentence kind of made it sound like I was a serial killer…

But in all honesty it is true, and I believe it is why God placed Jar in my life, and why this deployment is important (it still sucks but it is important). It forces me to step back, to give up my feeling of being in control of everything. It forces me to trust, to believe in what I cannot see. It is what I most fear but what I need most.

So now whenever I get the urge to pick up the phone just to see what Jar is doing, I don’t. Sometimes it stings a little, and the negative voice in the back of my head tries to chime in. But I’m getting better at not listening to it. And when Jar goes to the sandy crap-hole in the Middle East and I don’t get to talk to him for a while, I will be ok. Because I trust him, and because he believes in me.

And because I finally realized that I believe in me.