Emotional Maturity in Phoenix

I ain’t got none. I’m pretty sure I’m like… emotionally stunted. Or emotionally immature. In a weird way, I guess, considering how self-aware I am. My recent heightened level of self-awareness has kind of been telling me that, emotionally, I don’t feel anything like a 41-year-old woman who has been through what I have. I actually do feel like an idiot teenager the majority of the time.

I tried real hard to grow up real fast. I was very independent of my parents, but in romantic relationships, I generally found myself in co-dependent situations. There was a thing I thought I needed to be and happy wasn’t it. I mean, the thing I thought I was supposed to be wasn’t what would make me happy but I was trapped in the idea that I had no choice in the matter.

Ya’ll… I literally got “engaged” for the first time when I was 16 years old. Lost my virginity the day after my 16th birthday. Had a couple of pregnancy scares (except I wasn’t scared, really, because wasn’t that what I was supposed to do?) throughout high school. Moved from Indiana to Colorado a week after I finished high school mid-term, in late January. I got married the first time 2 months after that, exactly 5 months after my 18th birthday. I gave birth to my first child less than a month after my 20th birthday, my second child just over a month after my 23rd birthday.

I think I grew up so fast that my emotions couldn’t keep up. I did too many things too fast and I actually am, in a lot of ways, still an idiot teenager on the inside. Because I never really got to be one. A lot of my teen years are remembered with much seriousness and not a lot of fun. I was a mental and emotional train wreck to begin with, you know, as a teenage girl. Christ, was I fucked up. Puberty and boys and sex and bipolar disorder, PTSD that included ongoing trauma, anxiety, OCD, ADHD… almost all undiagnosed at that point.

I had this boyfriend in the second half of freshman year. We’d grown up together, I’d known him what felt like all my life (was probably more like since first grade), he was my first boyfriend, my first kiss, my first male best friend. We were 11. Maybe 12. And then junior high happened and (unicorn) we stayed great friends and I think even went to a couple of dances together. We had a standing date, basically. If we didn’t have dates to a dance, we’d always go together. Freshman year, some dance in the spring and neither of us had a date, so… And it was so lovely and there were kisses and we watched a movie at his house (with his mom haha!) after (hell if I can remember what movie, I was too busy holding his hand and being nervous as fuck because his mom was right there!) and then we were a thing. We were such a good thing, too. He was so sweet and good and just adored me.

The seed had already been planted, though. It was too good. I didn’t deserve such good. Or he deserved better than me. And an opportunity arose and I kissed another boy and that was that. He wanted to work it out but I can clearly remember saying that I couldn’t work it out, I was a horrible asshole, and he deserved better than me. That I couldn’t be with him and live with what I’d done. Oh, I was so self-destructive, even then, at only 15 years old. Because, of course, I ended up with the other boy I kissed and he was a fucking douchenozzle.

The point is, I guess, is that I’ve never experienced an emotionally mature relationship because I’ve never quite been emotionally mature. I’m still trying to play catch-up with myself. Only now, at 41 years old, when my children are almost all grown and I’m free of emotionally immature men in my personal life, am I able to experience a relationship that feels mature and rational and healthy.

Navigating this new reality is challenging to say the least. A large part of me feels as if I’m standing in the eye of a hurricane of emotion. I have to reach out and try to grab an individual emotion and then I have to dissect it. I feel mostly calm about it, but I keep getting derailed by what feels like giddy childish behavior. It feels embarrassing. It probably shouldn’t.

I think I’m mostly terrified of my own emotions because I’ve never been able to trust them. I feel like I’ve always had to talk myself into emotions about people. Like I’ve had to convince myself that my emotions were valid even though there were red flags everywhere that shouted, “These emotions are not valid! They are trickery!” Because I lacked emotional maturity, I was unable to listen to my own self, my own intuitions. And now it’s very difficult to trust myself at all, and so I’m feeling rabid spikes of insecurity and doubt.

Now that I feel slightly more mature than I ever have, I am (mostly) able to control my thoughts around these feelings even if I can’t control the feelings themselves. I can talk myself down most of the time, not get all caught up in the hurricane rushing by around me.

I think maybe I’m finally growing up, finally gaining the emotional maturity I’ve always lacked. A little. Maybe.