yikes!

seems i will have total immersion into the sweetie's family....not only did his daughter and granddaughter move in today, his son is coming on the 7th and asked if he can sleep on the couch! of course, his visit will not be permanent--neither is the daughter's, as the RV becomes intolerably hot in about mid-May--but i am feeling some overwhelmation....

in a day or so this is going to be funny, and i will be able to take it with a laugh and a shrug, but at the moment everything is igniting the long-buried horrible feelings of alienation and abandonment that i experienced when my father married my stepmother. i began retreating immediately, and acting out--and feel the same pulling tension right now. the need to escape, strike out, run away--which is one of those coping mechanisms born of a need to survive pain, but now feels a lot like an inappropriate, adolescent reaction.

soooooooo it's going to be interesting....as i texted sweetie this morning, 'every good deep connection pushes those good deep wounds'. we never know until we are pushed, do we? just how far we've come, how much we've learned, and how much we can choose a different response?

:/