Last Night's Spangles and Yesterday's Pearls

Over two years ago I wrote this post, about a word my friend got while praying for me. If you don't feel like reading it, the gist was identifying that oftentimes I live life at arm's length and my hope back then was to learn to change. What's remarkable in a way is that is, almost verbatim, what I'd write today; that same hope, that same sincere desire to change, and that same frustration at not knowing how to go about it. Living behind the bulletproof plexiglass of complexes and pride; one can see in, but they can't get close.

Every fight or disagreement (however severe or minor) I'm in I automatically assume that the other person is, or will be, finished with me. They'll leave; throw up hands and surrender. That that relationship is done. And I go through a period of wondering how and if I can get by without them, and how much I miss them. If I survive and aren't incapacitated, then I consider it an accomplishment of sorts. Like I didn't "let" my love for the person cripple me. This is true with both friendships and relationships. It's like a sick validation for my arm's length from life.
Today this is what is crippling me; this realization that this is my unconscious reaction to conflict within the important relationships in my life. What a sad and lonely place.
I'm sure the knee jerk “Oh, it's what happens to children of divorce” crap comes in but I'd like to not be a statistic for a moment. It does nothing to improve anything, really. I so desperately want to change.

It's a strange thing to be thinking about at this sunny and optimistic point in my life, but it is of the sort that rises in the stillness of repetitive tasking.