Naked

Some days I feel like I am a monster. Some days I feel like I am a quivering pile of intestines.

Sticking to my convictions and not settling is not only grueling and difficult, but it’s slowly changing me. I’m not certain if it’s for the better yet or not. I’m worried that it will turn me callous and cold in the long run – something that for 34 years I have managed to avoid.

Maybe I am just (once again and very true to form) overthinking things again. Perhaps I am so terrified of becoming a soulless asshole that I am already projecting…much the same way that I lament how others project their own feelings and presumptions onto me.

I have become a new version of myself that I never imagined. Strong in ways that I wouldn’t have pictured. I guess maybe this is part of what I am struggling with.

When did I become the sort of person who can listen to someone cry and just sit there? When did I stop blaming myself for everyone else’s emotional outbursts (however illogical that always was)? When did I cross that line?

I used to be so affected by other people’s emotions that I would apologize for everything. Things that absolutely were not my fault. Things so completely out of the realm of being within my control that they bordered on the ridiculous. But now?

Now I’m more selective in my apologies. It’s not just a blanket, “I’m sorry. What can I do?”, it’s, “I’m sorry that you feel that way. Do you want to talk about why you feel that way?”. It may just be semantics, but I realized that when it happened the other day, afterwards, I kind of felt like a dick because I didn’t take it to heart. I knew it wasn’t my fault. Wasn’t my doing.

I guess maybe I’m finally figuring some important shit out at 34. Or maybe I am turning into a callous, cold asshole. Maybe that’s the big change in me? Maybe it’s not the haircut afterall…maybe I finally figured out the secret all those women possessed that I used to pine over, year after year who didn’t give two shits about me growing up…they simply cared about themselves more?

I don’t want to be a monster though. I just want to be respected and loved for who I am and not what I look like. I want the love I deserve, not the ersatz infatuations I’ve always settled for before.

I cannot deny that I have changed. I know that some would happily and gleefully call me a selfish cunt, but is it really selfish to not want to have to always sacrifice and compromise to please someone else? Is it really selfish to be single versus miserable in a relationship where there is no communication and no middle ground? Is it such a terrible thing to want to be able to get back to how things were when I was 15 and fell in love for the first time with someone else who was just as enamored with discovering new things about herself as she was with discovering new things about and with me? Is it?

I don’t think so…but maybe that’s just the monster talking.

Rawr.

~ by tatterednotes on March 6, 2016.

Posted in Life
Tags: dating, emotions, feelings, lesbian, life, love, relationships, single, thoughts, women