Surviving Myself

I keep on writing and rewriting posts, hoping at least one of them will be entertaining. They’re not. Oh, well. Too bad for you.

There are a lot of things I don’t say. Everyone thinks I constantly speak my mind, and I do, for the most part, but some things are just so heartbreaking that I can’t say them out loud. It’s not even because I’m embarrassed, or because I’m afraid someone will figure out some deep dark secret of mine. It has nothing to do with that. I have very few secrets, just because I’m so bad at keeping them. No, it’s not that. I don’t always say everything, because I don’t like sobbing in front of people. I’m okay with some light crying, but sobbing? No.

For example, the other day, a friend of mine was telling me how everything he does in life is to fall in love, which is, quite frankly, adorable. I proceeded to confess to him that I felt emotionally incapable of falling in love. Coincidentally, my mother brought up my emotional availability the next day, and for some reason I couldn’t bring myself to tell her the horrible, horrible truth behind it all. I’m terrified that I don’t have a “lovable” personality. I fully believe that people don’t actually like me until they hang out with me for a year or so; until then, they tolerate me. This has been proved time and time again. So much so, it’s even an inside joke my brother and I have: I make a great fifteenth impression. I mean, my own family finds me annoying and difficult to deal with, now imagine a poor sucker who has to date me. Thank god I’m good in bed.

The impossibility of loving me has been thrown in my face so many times, by so many people, that I tend to avoid most humans. As a kid, my mother’s family had the very real fear that I would never have any friends because I wasn’t “normal.” For starters, what seven year old walks around telling strangers she wants to he a poet? Also, not to mention the fact, I was overly sensitive. I still am, but now I mask it with humor and and work (whereas before I would just cry and cry). As an adult, I avoid my mother’s family like the plague. Yes, Mom, maybe they’ve changed, but the other day one of my cousins pointed out how I’d get along great with a crazy girl who likes to beat people up, which can’t possibly be a good sign. However, I still can’t run from their critiques, because I somehow happen to find people who’ll treat me in similar ways they did. 

I seem to be attracted to people who like saying to me, “I could never love a person like you.” Damn, the first time someone said that, I threw up from how much it hurt, and then I yelled at him until he teared up. After four times, though, I don’t throw up anymore. The fact that I’m attracted to individuals like this is cause for concern. It’s almost as if I grew so used to emotional abuse from my loved ones that I learned to equate that with love. But what am I going to do? Go to therapy and get my family to apologize? The first one I’ve been doing for years, the second one is a pipe dream. Would their apology even fix anything? Probably not. I’ve feared for years that there was something irreparably fucked up inside of me, only to find out how right I was. Normal people don’t carry around their baggage like I do. You know what makes it even sadder? The amount of self-help courses I’ve taken and therapy I’ve gone to. It’s either all a scam or I really am beyond repair. 

So, I’ve given up on love, because I don’t have the stomach for it anymore. I don’t even let my friends get too close to me anymore. Why would I? I know how the story ends, with me alone on a park bench considering throwing myself into a trash can. No, but seriously, it always ends with someone truly getting to know me and being put off by my emotional intensity and my insatiable need to be right. I’m just waiting for lobotomies to be a thing again. 

I don’t handle rejection well. I am aware that I can’t expect for everyone to like me. Yes, I know this and it’s probably the reason why I refuse to meet new people (I already know they won’t like me). I equate rejection to failure and I don’t like failing. If I get rejected, I know it’s because something I did or didn’t do: I should’ve been smarter, or cooler, or more aloof; I shouldn’t have been so much of myself so quickly. My therapist says that the expectations I have of myself are too high, that my constant demand for perfection from myself will eventually put me in a grave. To that I say, “I’d rather be cremated.” No, I’m joking! Just let my corpse decompose on an empty field. 

I deflect with humor, like any intelligent person ever. Anyways, I am constantly at odds with myself: On the one hand, I wish I had a totally different personality, but, on the other, I’m sick of constantly playing pretend to get laid. It’s not even about the sex though; I just say that because it isn’t easy for me to admit that I’d like to be loved. It makes me feel pathetic and needy. Who needs other people when you’ve got your dysfunction to keep you warm at night?

And I know you’re there, on the other side of the screen thinking, “There’s someone out there for everyone! Don’t lose hope.” Fuck you. You’re trying to pair me off with the fucking weirdoes of this world. And that’s what’s left in the world for me: abusive people, serial killers, people with zero sex appeal, and people with little personal hygiene. I’m certain of it, because I’ve almost exclusively dated people from the categories above, except serial killers. But maybe I should start going for the serial killers, because at least Bundy never killed Kendall.

My mother thinks that thoughts like these lead to my depression. Maybe. However, my cynicism has always been a part of my life, it just doesn’t affect me unless I’m depressed. Usually, I can laugh everything off and think about my bright, bright (bright?) professional future, but then, all of a sudden, I get devastatingly depressed for weeks. Sometimes there are even days I’m unable to shower or get out of bed, and it all feels like a long march towards death: “Shall we speed up the inevitable?” 

My entire life I’ve lived on three settings: 1. Elated and feeling like I could jump off a building and survive the crash; 2. Destroyed and feeling like I might jump off a building, yet afraid of doing; 3. So busy with work I can’t feel anything. This has been my reality since I became conscious of my consciousness. I’m exhausted. Who wouldn’t be?

My mother doesn’t get it. She’s sane. She’s not terrified she might lose it one day and crash her car into a pole going 150km/h, just because it seemed like fun at the time. She doesn’t get compulsive thoughts, so it’s easy for her to say, “Just don’t think of that.” Believe me, if I had the ability to micromanage my depression 24/7, I might actually be lovable and emotionally available. I have to avoid my mother when I’m depressed, because it makes me more depressed to think about how much of an idiot I have to be to get so fucking depressed. I’ve been dealing with my ups and downs since I was twelve, so I must be fucking stupid to not have it figured out by now, right? My mother has zero tools to deal with me. Zero. She does her best, but she thinks my depression is always my fault, which makes me think that it’s my fault, which makes me feel like a worthless piece of shit, and then I google how to get a gun in Mexico without fucking with the cartel. Clearly, I have not been successful. Growing up, I truly believed that I’d one day outgrow my suicidal tendencies, that by the time I was twenty-five, I was no longer going to wake up in bed wishing I hadn’t woken up, but here we are.

My parents really don’t get it, neither does my brother, for that matter, that if the wind strokes my arm, it’ll bruise me. To be fair, though, most people don’t get it. They think the way my mom does, that I should be able to control my own brain. They don’t understand that I’ve lived my life trying to control every single thought and experience I’ve had to not be the way that I am. Until one day I realized that that control was doing me more harm than good. The depression was still present, the thoughts of self harm were still there, but it would all come out in the form of night terrors, sleep paralysis, and anxiety attacks that were so bad I couldn’t even look at myself in the mirror. Also, the need to control everything alienated me from the world almost completely. So, trying to control every thought and every experience that could lead to my depression was not a smart move.  

I’ve been this way my entire life. And I have tried building walls on top of walls on top of walls of rationalizations, trying to get myself to feel less, but I mostly end up feeling inadecuate. I don’t know what the solution is. I’ve tried a lot of different things and nothing seems to stick. Even therapy is starting to feel like a huge waste of time. I understand myself and where a lot of my dysfunction comes from; now, Mrs. Therapist, make it go away. Tell me what to do. Every therapist tells you that it gets better with time. And I’m like, “Fantastic. I have so much time in the world. It’s not like I’ve ever lost it and tried to take my life. No, that hasn’t ever happened and won’t ever happen. I have so much time. I’ll definitely make it to my fourties.” If you have the cure to depression or bipolarity or any of the multiple mental health diseases I’ve been diagnosed with, slide into my DMs. If you know a surgeon that’ll perform a lobotomy, I’m also game; drop that number into my inbox. If there’s a miracle drug that’ll fix me, I’m down to try that too. Just let me know, because I am so, so, so tired.

Of course, with my level of crazy, I am incapable of having any close relationship that isn’t codependent and toxic. So, for now, any type of love is off the table.