Naked

Dear 17/18 Year Old Me,

My dear, darling girl…where do I even begin. I know you think that you’re invincible. I know you think that you’ve got everything figured out. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but honey, you aren’t and you don’t.

Right now, you’re at college and you’re fucking around with classes and soooooo focused on your social life and experimenting with drugs and alcohol and your sexuality, and that’s OK. Nobody can tell you otherwise anyway, and honestly, I think you need to get some of the wild out.

You’re having lots of sex and hook-ups with lots of different women, you’re getting into gay bars that you have no business being in, and you feel on top of the world. Everything seems possible. And it is. Everything will ALWAYS be possible. However, there’s a REALLY big but here…

I know that you’re infatuated with one woman in particular. I know she’s ultimately why you decided to even apply at this school. I know she’s been keeping you at arm’s length because you’re still a minor, and I know you’re hoping that once you turn 18, you’re going to get your wish and you two will get together.

You will. And it’s going to be life-altering. But probably not in the way you’re expecting. It’s not going to last, dear heart. I’m sorry, but it’s not. I know that you’ve put her on this pedestal and made her out to be this unattainable goddess, and once you get her, you’re going to feel a euphoria that you are going to think you’ll never feel again, but I need you to know, the way you’ve idolized her is going to crush you when she doesn’t want anything serious with you.

It’s going to suck. You’re going to feel like you want to die. You aren’t going to know how to handle this rejection, and it’s going to send you down a path of idolization, putting women on pedestals, compromising your boundaries, losing yourself, putting your needs last, ruining your mental health, making really bad financial decisions, chasing approval and validation, jumping at the first signs of interest from people you’d never even be friends with if you just took time to get to know them, and a cycle of such out-sized attachment trauma based reactions that nobody is going to want to even try to be in a relationship with you. This is 38 year old you writing to you right now. I am the reality of this singular event and experience unfolding. I’ve been able to connect the dots backwards.

So please, be gentle with yourself. It’s going to be OK. Just because she doesn’t want anything serious with you doesn’t mean there is anything wrong with you!!! You have a lot of love to give, and I promise you that not having your affection reciprocated isn’t the end of the world.

Please also take advantage of your healthcare benefits and get yourself in therapy as soon as you can to address the issues from childhood that you’re bottling up. I know you think that you’ve handled it all and you’re not being affected by them. I can attest that you’re wrong. Your life will get a million times better once you start working on it. I promise.

Never forget that you are a rockstar. You’re so, SO worthy of love, affection, loyalty, romance, the whole package…and you WILL have it all someday. Don’t give up.

I love you!

38 Year Old Me

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We all tell a story about who we are. A daughter. A writer. A cat lover. A nomad. A homebody. The thing is, how many of us are holding ourselves back because of the stories we tell about ourselves?

I know what you’re thinking…and you might be right…I might be a little crazy…I might be a little esoteric…I might be taking being hardcore into therapy a teensy little bit too far. Or maybe I’m not. Maybe I haven’t been taking it far enough.

You see, I’ve been tasked and challenged by my therapist to journal about who I am. About what makes me, me. My values. My passions. My strengths. Because I have been all too willing to change who I am to fit the mold of what other people are looking for in the pursuit of supposed happiness, sex and I guess “love”…but can it really be love if I can’t be myself?

Anyway…before I go off on that particular tangent…I realized that when I sat down and really thought about the “story” I was telling about myself, it wasn’t a good one. It was a story that helped me perpetuate the same failing actions and the same failed relationships, over and over and over and over again. I can’t keep doing that. Definition of insanity and whatnot…

So, for accountability and to get it out of my brain once and for all, here goes nothing. This is the story of who I’ve been and who I will no longer be. Buckle in, because it’s a wild one;

I have always been the last stop relationship before people have found their “lifelong happiness”. The training wheels if you will. It’s been kind of a running joke that well over 50% of the people I have dated have pretty much immediately moved onto their spouses directly after me. Sometimes they left me for them, other times the timing was extremely suspect, so you can draw your own conclusions.

It wouldn’t matter how much time I took off in between relationships to work on myself, it just. Kept. Happening. Now, I’ve always prided myself on being an all or nothing kind of person, so when I have been in a relationship, I have given it and that person my absolute everything. And I do mean that. From my last penny to my last shred of personal dignity.

I have changed so many things about myself to try to become the perfect person for the person I have been with, it’s a little psychotic. Hairstyles, clothes, the way I’ve talked, I’ve gotten tattoos, I’ve not gotten tattoos, I’ve stopped eating and drinking things I really love. I’ve stopped watching the shows and movies I love and listening to the music I really enjoy and instead have just deferred to what they’ve wanted. I’ve accepted way less affection than I have wanted and needed. And probably the most telling about compatibility, I’ve not had the sex I’ve wanted and convinced myself that it was OK because I loved that person.

I have been a person who has been so desperate for love – so desperate to live the life I’ve always dreamed of – that I have jumped into relationships at the first sign of interest from people I had no business trying to be in a relationship with. I was so hurt and lacking of self-love that I sought it elsewhere, constantly. I routinely would see gigantic red flags and just keep on plowing ahead, convincing myself if I just tried hard enough, I could make it work. That I could finally be enough. But I never was.

I was never enough because they weren’t the right people for me. They all needed me to be something I wasn’t to fit their narrative, and I was all too willing to try to mold myself to fit their lives. I wasn’t living my life for myself. I was living my life to be seen and loved by other people.

And along the way, I lost sight of who I was, and I went from just not loving myself enough, to not loving myself at all, to actively hating who I was, because I was the person who got lied to. I was the person who got cheated on. I was the person who got lead on until they found someone new. But it wasn’t because I wasn’t good enough, it was all because I didn’t love myself enough to wait for the right person.

This was my story. This was my narrative. No more.

So if you see me around and you don’t recognize me, you’ll know why. I am changing my life. I am loving myself. I am putting myself first. I am fucking amazing, and I’m going to make a great wife to a very lucky woman some day. Maybe I’ll even make a great mom. Who knows. My story has yet to be written, but rest assured, I am the hero of my own movie now.

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I feel like literal shit barely warmed over. I haven’t been to work in 3 days, and I’m going in today, but I don’t know that I have the energy in me to fake being OK.

I keep asking myself and those closest to me what the fucking lesson is that I am missing. Why I keep going down this path of self-deluded, give my everything, “love”, only to ignore all of the red flags, ignore all of my boundaries, and for what? External validation? Feeling good about myself because another human wants to be with me?

Because that’s 100% what I’ve been doing. I still give it my all and love with my whole heart, but I keep jumping for people who either have massive problems of their own (then I feel needed), or who are emotionally unavailable (then I feel special because they are giving me attention, even if it’s bad or the bare fucking minimum).

One of my good friends and I spent hours on a video call last night because, let’s be real, I was NOT in a good place and I needed to not be alone for awhile. She gave me this list of red flags that I can’t ignore anymore, and one of them was, “Anyone who is attracted to you in your broken, or desperate state. (Because you will not always be broken, and they will try to keep you that way)”.

While I may not necessarily agree that everyone would try to keep a broken person broken, it’s a really good point, and brings up a good question…why do people pursue others who are broken? Is it because they want to fix them? Is it because it makes them feel strong to be with someone who is in a vulnerable state?

One thing I do know – *if* I get into another relationship, it won’t be for a long time. And it won’t be until I am a whole person. I’d say again, but I’m suspecting that I haven’t been a whole person since childhood. Some long pushed aside shit is coming up recently and I’m not OK with what that probably means about me as a person.

I’m an anxious attacher. I fall madly in lust/like/love with my polar opposites who avoid attachment like the plague, or who (this is SO much worse for me) vacillate between being super attached and then super cold. I always thought that cheating was the biggest mistake someone could make with me, but I’m learning that it’s lies and lying that are what send me off the cliff. Not only confirmed lies (ironically, I feel better once I know the truth and the other person admits it), but those inconsistencies and incongruities that get my mind churning trying to find the lies. I am relentless when I perceive that I’m being lied to.

Oh, what’s that? That’s a sign of hyper vigilance and a key indicator of unresolved trauma? You don’t fucking say. Problem is, I still don’t know where or when exactly I got so fucked up. Not yet anyway. But I need to figure it out.

I have to. For what’s left of my sanity and my heart.

Man, I’m going to be so hard to get to know for the next person who tries. Or I’m just going to still be a mess and push them away.

Still don’t understand how or why I felt (and still feel) the things that emerged in this last one. And that’s what makes it so much worse.

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Yeah, yeah…I know.

I’ve been absolutely terrible at updating. I let the domain expire. I hadn’t written anything in MONTHS. Well, anything that wasn’t meant for personal consumption, anyway.

So, news. I’m single. I am possibly at the lowest point a human being can get without being dead. I don’t know how to fix my life, and I’m in therapy so much I’m pretty sure my therapist is in therapy.

To say that shit has been dark would be a massive understatement.

Turns out, I’m really shitty at relationships. I mean, spectacularly bad. I’m not sure that a human being is supposed to feel like lava is being poured down their insides, but again, yeah.

I have, at points, in the last little while, thought about no longer existing. No, I didn’t want to kill myself, but I have contemplated if the world would be any different without me in it. If it would be better.

Unfortunately for me, I haven’t caught COVID at work, and I get to sit in my pain and cry myself to sleep at night wishing things were different. My therapist says I’m grieving and its totally natural to have really good days and them just get blindsided by something and be hurt all over again.

But then again, I don’t just hurt. I go off the deep end into a cycle of pain and just…just know it’s not pretty.

People who know me casually think I have my shit together. The few people who know me really well…well, I know I’ve scared a few of them recently. I’m not ok. I’m not in a good headspace. I haven’t been in years. And I need to take responsibility for everything that I’ve done.

I’ve hurt people. I’ve reacted very poorly. I’ve maneuvered from a place of such profound hurt that has just been compounding that I don’t know who I am anymore. Genuinely. I look in the mirror and it’s like face blindness.

I’ve done things I’m not proud of. I’ve recorded breakdowns and fights and tried desperate measures to save relationships. But they weren’t going to be saved. I just made them far, far worse.

Scorched earth and whatnot. That’s how I’ve been rolling. Because I have been so desperate to feel loved and wanted and needed and desired that I got into relationships I had no business being in.

I hadn’t done the hard work on myself and I know now that I was seeking affection and validation from others because I am not secure in myself. I am not happy with myself. Like, in fact, I’m pretty much the opposite.

I feel stuck. I keep repeating the same patterns over and over and over again. I’ve been the cameo in so many other people’s movies, it’s no wonder I’m living in what is essentially a closet with a window. This is where I’ve ended up by putting the responsibility for my happiness in other people’s hands.

I am broke down. Raw. This is the most vulnerable I’ve ever felt. I’ve just successfully ensured yet another relationship can never be repaired or rekindled, and I’m so sick that all I want is to have someone love me unconditionally and wrap their arms around me and hold me while I cry it all out. And yes. I cry. A lot. I know I’ve been accused of being unemotional and stoic in past relationships, but holy fuck have I become a world champion at it lately.

This isn’t all doom and gloom though. I am working on myself. Hard. In therapy. Taking seminars. Reading loads of books. Watching tons of videos. Sleeping to positive affirmation meditations. Writing in two separate positive mindset and gratitude journals. Attempting to get beyond the story of me that has become so engrained in my psyche that I live down to it.

I want more than this life I’m living, if that’s what it can even be called. I deserve it. I deserve happiness. I’m not that scared kid just begging for attention and approval anymore. I need to act like it.

I don’t know what will ever become of this blog…if anything. However, this is my accountability.

I’ve been a really shitty fucking person to be around for the past few years, and I own that. I’ve fucked up a lot, in sometimes unforgivable ways. I did that. Me. Sorry will never be enough.

I’m changing. I have to. I will die if I don’t.

So, here goes…my honest, no holds barred documentation of where I am. Starting today.

Names, if used, will be changed.

Oh, and I fucked up big today. I broke my own damned no contact policy because I found something out and I reacted by confronting. To say it went poorly is the understatement of the century. I really do like to kill any chances of reconciliation with people.

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