Please dont leave….Part 1
Understanding my abandonment issues….from humans to pixar
You stay here and read this…Where are you going!?
I have tried to watch the Pixar film Wall-E four times in my life, and each time I get to the same point and have to turn it off and leave.
Right here is the moment I fall apart.
It is when Eve powers down and Wall E does not understand where or why she has gone. The stress is real people!
My Wonderful, stable pineapples, I ask you to sit with me here a moment as I break down what happens at the very moment in this film…hold on tight, it gets bumpy, but it underpins everything that will be explored in this blog.
Wall-E holds an umbrella for a robot he has fallen in love with, that has powered down. He stands there…holding it over her so she does not get wet…perhaps she is still in there and I dont want her to get wet, Wall E thinks. Wall-E knows she was there a moment ago and so, surely, she is still there somewhere….and if she is there…I want her to know that I will be here for her…even when it rains.
And as this make believe dialogue runs through my brain quicker than a lightning bolt hits a tree, there is a sharp pain. A familiar hurt that I am sharing with a Pixar character…oh stop it, yes I am aware of what I just typed, just hold my hand for a minute. Then come the tears, but not tears of sadness, tears of that overwhelming feeling of being left alone. Now I am not talking left alone in a room for a few minutes, I am after all, an adult. Oh no, this is a deeper loneliness, a feeling that you had something that filled you with joy and a love for life that has been ripped from you, like a limb being amputated with no anaesthetic.
The last time I tried to watch this film I left the room and started making dinner and, half way through chopping a cabbage, I realised I was crying, this was only 4 months ago. So I stood there with a cabbage in one hand and asked myself what it was, really, that had hurt so much. And the words I said back to myself were this….He (Wall-E) was just left and he has no idea why, where they are or if they are ever coming back, what did he do wrong….and I as I said this out loud, I dropped to my knees and sobbed clutching my chest.
I know I know it all got a bit real there,are you all ok?! I told you it would get a bit rough around the edges, but we had to go here so that I can talk to you about the process of figuring out why this happens. So guess what gang…I brought a book…I know,, shock horror! Which can only mean one thing…a bit of research. No facts or figures here though, so you can stop that eye roll right now, I see you at the back.
The book is by Susan Anderson and, although not directly related to abandonment, it holds valuable information on when our inner child is in turmoil and how our reckless outer child reacts. Now I do have to admit that I feel personally attacked on each page, as my partner can attest to when I looked at him half way through a paragraph and just cried. He asked if I was ok and I responded with…. shhhhh I am evolving. And yes, as rainbow dancey in the wind with flower head bands as that sounds, I really was evolving.Through each page I learnt about how your outer child takes a cry from your inner child and instead of nurturing it, behaves like a narcissistic teenager and tells you you hate yourself and you didn’t ask to be born. (sorry mum, I apologise to her in most blogs now)
She explains that your outer child acting out is your inner child asking for something. And the inner child is less able to fight the reactions of the outer when the inner child is hurt. What strikes me as I go through this book, and why I think it is linked so heavily to abandonment, is that when I witness abandonment, for example in Toy Story when Andy leaves for university, my inner child is so hurt that my outer child doesn’t act out with aggression but just shuts down entirely. And as a result, I , me, myself, both inner and outer collapse.
We will go back to Andy in Toy Story, he has a lot of explaining to do. YOU COULDNT JUST VISIT THEM ON THE WEEKEND ANDY!? WE HAVE BEEN THROUGH 3 FILMS TOGETHER! DID IT MEAN NOTHING!? You see that this has clearly not affected me in any way….
Right, back to the main event.
Susan Andersons book also talks about your third self which is your adult self. This is the part of you that is you, the real you…the one that pays the bills and reads the books. Your adult self is responsible for looking after your inner child and scolds your outer. So here is my question? What happens when both the outer and inner child have collapsed under the weight of feeling abandoned? Does the adult self then have the capacity to pick them both up again? Or has it seeped far enough in that it becomes the achilles heal of the adult self? …The truth is gang, I do not have the answer to this, because understanding and then dealing with abandonment is a process. It is a deep, self archeological dig and then healing between all three parts of you.
A familiar hurt that I am sharing with a Pixar character-Remember when I said this earlier? It got me thinking that the pain I feel is indeed familiar, when I look at Wall E and all the toys from Toy Story I understand. This is not a new feeling, this is a hurt deep rooted, I am not human in these moments, I am a new Pixar character. The difference is my credits dont roll and I dont know what the ending is, because it hasn’t been written yet.
My weird prickly fruits, there will be a part 2 to this that explores the journey I go on trying to pick this apart. We will sit and attack my outer child to try to get to my fractured inner child…because my loves…..she and I need to talk.