has this affected your ability to have a home?

June 20, 2010

I wonder if I am the only one like this. I have been in flight from putting down

roots my entire life. I have lately been trying to work through my fear of

having an actual place of my own. I have a fear of even saving up a down

payment. I literally have a phobia of accumulating money in a savings account. I

try to focus on it and it's like I have this morbid fear that any step toward

having a place of my own and *it* (whatever from childhood) will " get me " . I

have almost no furniture. No knicknacks of any kind. I have never kept photo

albums except of my animals. I suspect there is trauma there that I haven't

unearthed yet because this is a pretty severe aspect. But I just can't get

within yards of anything domestic. I want, and need to attach myself to the

earth in some kind of permanent way, I am almost 42. But over the years I have

lived in the most spartan conditions. In trailers, renting rooms, in people's

hallways sleeping on day beds, on couches, whatever. I can fit all my

possessions in the back of a pickup truck. I have ridiculous resistance to doing

what normal people my age did years ago, having a real " home " . Not just a place

you stay, but a real home, even if it's just rented, with your stuff here and

there and it looks like you live there. The common aspect of where I have lived

over the years is that it was always inadequate and impermanent and I couldn't

feel 'at home' there. I am more comfortable with not being able to feel 'at

home' for some reason the thought of feeling 'at home' brings up serious anxiety

for me when I think about this and picture myself in a 'home' of my own with my

possessions around and staying there for an indefinite period of time. I've been

here seven years but this is just a shack with no running water so I have to go

in and out of my parents house to shower/etc, and there is no air conditioning

and it is very cold in the winter because I only have a space heater. But these

kind of conditions are my 'safe zone'. Anything actually adequate gives me

extreme discomfort to think about. I guess why I am bringing it up is because

it's more than 'discomfort' it's I feel I am incapable of getting past it and I

feel stunted by my inability to provide a home for myself. Everything in my life

seems to insure that I am making sure I never have one. I don't understand it,

except for the craziness and sickness I grew up in, in a 'typical american

family home'.

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