Did I say that I was living in Limbo? I think what I meant to say was that I am living in Hell. It isn't that I don't know what I want to do, it's that I think I've officially given up trying anything anymore. There's only so much a person can take before they say "enough is enough". I've had enough. We are taught growing up that life isn't fair, but no matter how many times that notion is crammed down our throats, it never gives us any comfort. Life should be fair. It just should. It's not okay to have a broken childhood, to become a hardened survivor because of it and then have to spend your entire adult life unlearning all of defense mechanisms you had to learn growing up. I've learned through years of therapy that almost every single feeling I have is an overreaction. My emotional self is stuck at about eight years old and no matter how much I try to encourage my inner child that "everything is going to be okay", years and years of life experience has done everything to convince me otherwise.
Ignorance is bliss. Unfortunately, I am smart enough to know certain things that keep me from being less than blissful. For instance, I know that a beautiful, cheerful, bright and sunshiny woman can hide a deep dark secret from the world and die from self medicating because her life hurts too much. I know that a man can be married to a woman for over twenty years, help raise her daughter and then leave her when he comes into his inheritance...and never speak to the daughter again. I know that not everyone gets to live their dreams. Some people just end up being bartenders. I know that you can lie beside someone and feel more lonely than if there was no one there at all. And I know that you can cry for hours and hours and nobody will come to comfort you.
I have never been more terrified in all of my life. I'm scared of myself. I'm scared that I see old demons resurfacing and I know better than to indulge them, but I do anyway. I can see myself running, no sprinting, into the center of disaster. I can feel this need to be taken care of as though I were a child, but I'm not a child. It's too late to get that kind of love. And the sad fact is that I will never stop wanting it, never stop needing it. I have been here before. A few times. What's scary about being here now is that I am creeping up on forty. I should have learned to cope by now. I haven't.
It is amazing to me to have as many advantages as I do and still not be able to make a go of things. I am smart, attractive, talented, or so I've bee told. And this isn't me being conceited or anything. Trust me. Knowing these things about myself does nothing to make me feel confident or able. For how I feel, I might as well be the ugliest, stupidest, most untalented person to walk the earth. And I know I am being super self indulgent with these feelings. Oh poor me. I get it, I really do. But there's just this self destructive part of me that has taken the reins and doesn't care. I am broken. And I don't know how to put myself together again. How many times can you super glue something back together before you decide "this thing has just become a piece of junk" and toss it into the trash? Besides, we already know that not even all of the kings horses and all of the kings men could put Humpty together again.
I recently met with my therapist and I felt bad for her. I felt bad that she's taken so much time and energy to get me to this super good place (where I was about nine months ago) only to see it just all come crumbling down. All of her hard work. All of MY hard work. It's all gone to shit.
The one and only thing that I want is to love. That is all. But you can't get other people to love you until you love yourself and show them that you are worthy of their love. With me, it's a bit of a catch-22 cause I'm never going to believe that I am lovable until someone else actually loves me first. I wouldn't love me right now if I were someone else. I don't know how I would feel about me. Lemme think. Yeah, it's too hard to see myself from the outside. I think I would just feel sorry for me and then walk away. It's hard to watch people be in pain. It's hard to watch people struggle. I feel like maybe if someone were to just hold me for about a hundred years, THEN, MAYBE I would feel better. I honestly think that's what it would take.
Here's a question: Would I hold me for about a hundred years?
Yes, I believe if I could I would. I guess that's something.
A great post. And I know what you're talking about. I believe you're a good person and are better than all this, but there's the rub: this is a sick, sick world, that only seems to reward shallow, infantile, vicious intentions and behavior.
ReplyDelete(Except for Richard Branson, he seems like an okay dude.) :P