“You are the reason for my original conviction, the unrequited curse I placed on my own life, to seal the fate of a faulty life script…and visited upon me through muses of the distant bend upon the tracks of time, for the sake of destiny and a nurturing love fathomed, the reason to sit through freshly fallen snow topped mountains. For visions of nurtured posterity of the vanquished, to ponder the unseen of mine own wish fulfillment, that had been denied for my own sake to live. Upon the mountain to call out across the valley and envision one such as you, I pondered in forested paths of life lived in the wake of the ashes of pristine youth. And called to me across the parallels that you were near, a sign that all was not lost but to live again. Venture my captain through Terrain of moonlit nights, unknown to mortal days and forlorn vacant streets, and housed in tavern austere psyche subterfuge of comrades…the one who uttered whiskey sweet obtuse stanzas of the dialect of the blessings of dead poets…with whom I ventured to bare witness to the nebula in Orions belt buckle and the plasma of the milky way…to whom I visit afresh the adventure of a Monday morning, conspirator of the days past eternities…and fashioned upon the golden years asunder histories muses.

I don’t know if I can relinguish my memories like a Shintu’ priest teaching his disciples that “you cannot make up words like extemporarity”…

The other thing I found fascinating was the secure base formation where the baby is free to roam and knows that the mother is still there. I’m not sure I ever had secure base formation and I was a freaking NUT in relationships with all kinds of crazy abandonment, under attachment, over attachment issues.

John Bowlby’s main work is 3 volumes: Attachment, Separation and Loss. They are very academic but I found them to be so enlightening.

The whole attachment/abandonment/secure base formation was SUCH an important part of my craziness. I had to grieve all that I did not have. And sometimes it’s still a challenge to grieve what I never had.

Your insight is GREAT and I’m glad you found it helpful.

I have a couple of questions about the chronic anxiety and depression Bowlby says occur in people when the attachment/bonding with their primary caregiver(s) during childhood was inconsistent . He suggests the depression that results from a lack of bonding or incomplete bonding might also be a form of mourning. The depression is a result of incomplete mourning but also a result of attachment that never took place.

One question is: if the attachment to the primary caregiver was incomplete or never occurred, then how does one detach from the caregiver, with whom one was never attached?

Also, it seems that if attachment never occurred, as a result of inadequate bonding, then the person would be in a perpetual state of grief — from never having experienced the attachment to the primary caregiver. The unbonded child/person would be feeling loss on both fronts: lack of initial bonding and letting go of the dream(?) of bonding with the caregiver/love object.

So, if the person, who didn’t experience the bonding/attachment as a child with his/her primary caregiver, was depressed because he couldn’t mourn or detach because there was no connection to begin with, wouldn’t that person then be seeking to attach and detach simultaneously, with each and every love object that came into that person’s life, thereafter?

I know these are a lot of ifs, Susan, but it seems like that might be why it’s so hard for many of us to let go!

If we did not bond with our primary caregivers, and feel that safety and security, that the theorists discuss, then wouldn’t it make sense that many of us would be simultaneously seeking to attach and to detach, with subsequent significant others?

It would be easy to get stuck: if we are trying to attach, while trying to detach.

I don’t know if any of this makes sense. I welcome any comments you might have.

Thanks.

Seeif