Well, Suite101.com is making major changes in its business structure, so this will be my last agoraphobia column. The powers that be did not give us much warning, so I am sorry that this goodbye comes so suddenly. I will truly miss this community where I have felt like perhaps I am doing some good and helping to provide a forum for others to feel less alone and to meet and know others who struggle with similar issues of anxiety and human struggle. It has been healing for me to write these essays and I hope that it has been healing for you as readers as well.
This is a time of extraordinary change in my life. Stressful change. Exciting change. In nine days, I have to move out of this apartment and go somewhere, hopefully to my own little house. As I'm told there always are, there have been glitches along the way. SONYMA (State of New York Mortgage Assistance) has wheels which grind exeedingly slowly and I'm still waiting for my letter of commitment and a closing date. I'm hoping that it will come soon and that if it does, the current owners of the house will let me move in before we close if I have to. I'm not sure that they will and then I will have to move twice, something I'm truly dreading. I am lucky, though, that I have friends who have said they will take me and my kitties in for as long as it takes to close on the house. Wow.
Late Friday afternoon, when I was expecting the letter of commitment, there was, instead, a "glitch" that almost sank the whole deal. If it were not for my niece Diana, who has already done so much, the deal on the house would have fallen through. Beyond the all measure of generosity, she paid down half of my pending debt so that I will pass the SONYMA test for eligibility. She did this without hesitation, without shaming me or judging me or all the things I was doing to myself.
Which brings me to today's closing topic. Diana loves me. God knows why, but she does. A fair number of people seem to love me, something that continually puzzles me. I'm not saying that to be modest or coy. The depth - and the habit - of my self-hate and shame is so profound that I have a hard time seeing why anyone would truly love me. Unlike my brother, I AM capable of receiving love - but I realized this weekend - which is the reason I decided to write this column - that although I accept love and wrap it around myself to some degree, I don't let it in. I think I am not alone in this. I think it is a by-product of a shame-based life. I have come a long way in healing from the shame that was poured into me as a child. I am more aware of how I think about myself, more aware of the ways in which I punish myself not for anything that I have done, but simply for existing at all.
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