Saturday, December 30, 2017

This poetry is probably bad but whatever

I can't fix your problems
No matter how bad i want to
Take you in my arms and kiss your face
That stupid smile with the dimples
Make you feel true love, uninhibited by conditions or expectations

But I know that although i hate to admit it,
I do have expectations
Though i would rather call them "hopes"
Hopes that you will realize you need fixing
Hopes you will ditch those friends you get plastered with
Or at least find a new hobby
Hopes that you will change your mind about what you said about commitment
Hopes I could be good enough to be the one to make you change it
But I don't want to be one of those girls who sees a man as a project
I want to love you for who you are
unconditionally.

I wish I could sit by your side a thousand more times and hear you pour out your secrets
I never told you how special i felt to be privy to what you seldom spoke
It was my drug -- light stuff compared to what you've done as I understand, but heavy and heady for a lightweight like me

It killed me when you went silent
I worried for a week whether you were okay but didn't want to push you
I know you hurt the night you opened back up, but it was one of the best nights of my short, stupid life
You let me see that vulnerable side again, but we laughed together as much as we sat in stony silence
You asked me what I thought,
and maybe that made me drunk on power, knowing that for once I was needed
Looking back, I think you just needed someone to talk to
But at the time it was the hit i needed to get hooked on you
And I've been craving it ever since

I've never been high or drunk
Maybe that's why you don't want me -- I'm too naive
But i have my reasons
I'm too anxious and grew up too sheltered
Plus I'm such a wreck sometimes
I'm scared if I started, I might never stop
Kind of like you
But I told you that once, didn't I

Sometimes i wish I'd told you I was worried
Worried you might be coping with things the wrong way
I just wanted to be supportive when you felt like you had failed
Because to me, you will never be a failure
But, shit, how I worry about you.
It eats away at me sometimes,
   wondering if I should have said more,
   imagining what you're up to

All the same...
Shit, I miss you.

It's stupid, knowing you don't care too much about me any more,
But I pray for you sometimes
Since I can't talk to you, I'm not sure what else to do
But love you from afar
And beg a deity to maybe give me a chance to be the one who will change your mind to think of white dresses instead of the white powder that sometimes clouds your mind

Shit, I miss you.
I try to shove those feelings deep down cuz I know its a lost cause
But right now, laying back that night in my head as I curl up in my twin bed, my mind always drifts to what I'd rather be doing with you

It's funny cuz I know
I know right now you're probably fucking her, stupid wasted
But I can't shake you
Not after I've seen your heart naked

Tuesday, December 19, 2017

It's not fair (still): When people let you down but you can't bring yourself to let them down.

I am frustrated.

Again.

Because when my friend texted me this morning, ranting in all caps that he had found out his former best friend was getting married through a friend who saw on social media, I knew I had to write back. I couldn't ignore someone in so much pain. I automatically remembered the betrayal I had felt in similar situations, the way some people remember where the keys on the piano after not sitting at the bench for ten years, the way others' feet start running every time they slip those worn out sneakers on and step out the front door onto the pavement. Muscle memory, only with emotions.

I could feel a tiny bit of that burning pain I knew must be searing my friend's soul that morning, like hearing the crack of thunder far in the distance and anticipating the familiar roll of thunder and patter of rain that you know will soon engulf your little corner of the world. Even if it's the first storm of the summer, and you'd almost forgotten about the pesky things, you remember what a thunderstorm is like because for years you've sat through them. It's sort of the same with chronic emotional hurt. You've been through it so many times that when someone says it's happening to them, you know exactly what they mean. And you know how much it sucks. And you know it can't be put into words. And you know that there's nothing you can say to make it better. All you can do is try.

It's frustrating not to know what to say, but it's worse to say nothing.

So I said I was sorry. I said it sucked. That people suck. That it was wrong.

I was mad though, because I had messaged him a week or so ago with a long word vomit about how I was struggling, with no reply. Normally this is a friend I can be honest with and expect support and understanding. I was tempted not to reply to his message, but I couldn't be that person. I know the pain too well.

All the same, I've been falling back into blue lately, having one dark cafe day after another, feeling that familiar blankness softly cover my mind with a numbness like snow falling silently on a dark street, quietly changing the landscape, flake by flake, until suddenly you wake and look out and your entire landscape has changed. Others look out and see a winter wonderland - maybe a day off work or school, a romp making snowmen and angels - but you just see grey. As far as the eye can see - color stifled, the senses muffled in earmuffs and thick layers, isolation enforced, the world shut down temporarily.

I hate that feeling. It makes me so scared.

Scared it's all going to go down to that deepest, darkest place I've been where I couldn't handle to pain and nobody could help me carry it. Before that awful year, I started feeling blue this very same time of year. It came on quietly, slowly, just as it is now.

Now that it's happening again, I feel afraid it will spiral out of control again.

I feel afraid I will not know how to push through it.

I feel mad because it keeps happening.

I feel mad because it's unfair some people can just be happy. 

I feel alone because I'm afraid to keep reaching out to talk or asking for help because I just don't know who cares any more.

I feel alone because I know he is not the right man and he will not love me. He does not love me the way I deserve.

I feel mad because it's not fair that I give to others and others rarely give back to me. Sometimes they even take.

I'm mad because I love and he doesn't and I end up getting hurt. I keep being the one who gets hurt while he goes on with his life, semi-oblivious.

Sunday, December 17, 2017

Love kind of sucks. (But I'm still obsessed with it.)

It's unbelievably hard to be disappointed in relationships. It's hard to put yourself out there emotionally, to make yourself vulnerable, to risk getting hurt or being rejected or being embarrassed...and then to have the risks you took be disregarded. I can't imagine how much it hurts to be turned down or broken up with. It's easy to downplay the pain of having things just...not work. But it hurts.

It hurts to get your hopes up and keep trying to get to know a person, but then it slowly becomes clear that you're the only one doing the work in the relationship. It hurts to get up the guts to ask someone out, have things go well, in your eyes, and then have them respond with ambivalence when you suggest you meet up again. It's frustrating to always be the one starting the conversations; are they busy or are they sick of you?

I'm sick of seeing pictures of him going out with friends, over-indulging like he's still in college, while I suffer from this wraith-like illness. I've let him know I've hurting. Maybe not in so many words, but he knows I struggle. But even though I put aside everything to be there for him when he needed me, I find him strangely absent all these times I need him. He's rather ghost-like himself in his interactions with me. I guess sometimes I'm a fun distraction if he wants to procrastinate. But he has other friends. And he must have other distractions, because every time he makes me a promise, it never seems to get fulfilled. I always tell myself he's just busy. I always secretly hope he might actually send me that thank you email. Might let me know he appreciated my listening, that he considers me a friend. I just want to know where I stand with him. And I want to know I'm wanted. It's selfish, it's stupid. I guess if he considered me a friend, he would treat me like one.

----

I don’t know why I keep forgiving you, after all the times you’ve let me down. Hurt me. Disappointed me. All the times you’ve gone out getting drunk and fucking around with your friends while I’m at home crying my eyes out on the phone over you. I know I’m stupid for giving you every second chance I did, but you’re even more stupid for never appreciating me, for letting my go without a fight. I was there for you when you needed me, and where are you now? You’ve known how bad things have been, I’ve never made it a secret. So where are you now? And why didn’t I think you would be my friend, much less my lover?

I'm stupid, but so are you, my beautiful one, so are you. You will always hold a piece of my heart, and you will never take good care of it, unlike the rest of your antiques. 

And I will be the one who hurts.

Not you. Because you never cry after all, just like you once told me. 

You said you almost cried when you talked to her. Sometimes I'm jealous of her. I know I shouldn't be, but I am sometimes. 

Fuck you for the way you've fucked with me.

I know I should hate you, but I can't seem to kill these other feelings. Yet I can't bring myself to call them love either.

I know I probably dodged a bullet in all this - we wouldn't work, would we? But it really kills me sometimes. I loved every minute I was with you, even the awful ones. I feel your absence after all these months. I miss your conversation -- I ache for it. I don't know if you would laugh at all of this and show it to your friends, or if you would get really silent the way and shut the world out you do when you know you've fucked up with someone you know matters. 

I wish I knew how you felt about me, regardless of whether we should or could be together.

I wish you wouldn't shut me out.

Saturday, December 2, 2017

Friends kind of suck.

"Now I'm fucking lonely / and you didn't want me / trying to show me / that you didn't own me / but all you do is leave me / fucking lonely / knees on the concrete / got up I'm bleeding / for no goddamn reason / but all you do is leave me fucking lonely / leave me fucking lonely"  - "Lonely" by Demi Lovato
I wrote in another post about how I met up with an old friend from the first college I attended. We hadn't seen each other in two years, since I had left our alma mater because of the severity of my depression at the time. My friend spent quite a bit of time catching me up on the drama that had gone on in her little friend group from our alma mater since I had been gone. The awkward part of this, of course, is that I was friends with all of the members of this friend group. For some reason they bonded with each other and I never made it onto the wagon, even though I would hang out with them occasionally (when they deigned to invite me) and was friends with all of them individually. During my last year at the school, they would have hang out and go on road trips together, and, as I found out in the course of my conversation this September, have secret meetings and trips off campus I wasn't even aware of.

Anyways, I kept in some touch (or at least attempted to) with some of this group since I left that school, and I had caught wind of some troubles in paradise, but I was never entirely sure what was going on. My friend decided to dish on everything, and I was a bit surprised about all the drama, a bit taken aback that so much went on without my knowing. I was most shocked by all the difficulties they apparently went through during the school year after I left, pretty much none of which I was told about. My friend talked about how much they had struggled, how hard it had been, how much they had had to rely on each other, etc.

I nodded empathetically, I even felt guilty about being so absorbed in my own struggle with depression at the same time they were struggling. I started to question whether my struggle was special or even a valid complaint at all. She never acknowledged what I had gone through or that she had excluded me, even though I had in recent months expressed to her my pain over those things. Beyond that, it felt like she was rubbing in my face how close she and her two friends (also my friends) were, and what great friends they were.

I'm thinking of all this again today - I'd much rather be moving on with my life - because this friend was going through one of her besties' photos on social media and commenting on all of them, I'm assuming to cheer the friend up and show her appreciation for her. I honestly, as shallow as it might be, felt a bit jealous, a bit angry...I've tried to hard over the past three years that I've known this woman to be a supportive, loving, encouraging friend. I've tried to open up, I've listened when she broke down, I've listened when she raved about friends she loved, I've kept in touch since we moved to different areas...I don't honestly know what more I could've done to be a better friend. But for some reason I'm not good enough to be her best friend.

If at any time during this difficult time that she and her friends went through, any of them had turned to me for comfort, I would have provided it, no matter how much I myself was struggling. My friend acted like they only had each other and talked about how much closer they got relying on each other, and I felt even more excluded. I don't know why I couldn't have been included in the group after one of their members betrayed them. I don't know why they're issues were so all-encompassing that they it kept them from checking in on me after I left school because of my mental health issues.

I know this all sounds petty, it's just that it feels like this same shit keeps happening to me over and over in different incarnations. If it's not these friends, it's another set. If it's not a friend, it's a guy I like, who I go out of my way to express interest in, support, compliment, etc., and receive lukewarm "thanks" - if even that - in response.

I've been talking about the concept of anger with my therapist in recent weeks, how it's an emotion we tend to marginalize because it's socially frowned upon, especially in women. Coming from a religious background, I know often anger is condemned as immoral, but there is legitimate anger; Jesus yelled at the moneychangers and overturned their tables. It can be a serious problem that oftentimes we push that anger down; it poisons us, it spreads, it festers. It never gets dealt with or solved.

It's okay to allow ourselves to space for anger in our heart, to acknowledge that we are hurt and mad. There are completely valid reasons to be mad sometimes. Acknowledging that anger and getting it out, whether by telling a trusted friend or therapist about it, writing it down, painting it, exercising, screaming into a pillow, or whatever. Tear their photo up, throw your shirt across the room, shout "Fuck you" aloud when you're alone...there are non-destructive ways to expel some of that frustration and experience catharsis.

Pardon my French...but I think it needs to be said:

Fuck my crappy friends. Fuck the guys who haven't seen the good woman in front of them; one day I'll find someone who sees I will love them (and fuck them) like nobody else could. Fuck this hurt I've been carrying around all these years. Fuck this inferiority I've developed because of internalizing that I don't seem to be any of my friends' priority. Fuck social media and likes and feeling like only whatever the popular girls are after you graduate college can post pictures of their new dresses - you're not cool enough for that. I'm over seeking external validation for the good or bad I go through.

I hurt that year that my friends did. I was fucking dying inside. Nobody will ever take that way from me. That changed me. I will never be the same as I was before that year, and I don't feel the same as most people my age because of it. And if you were my friend and couldn't even send a fucking email to respond to my announcement that I wasn't coming back to school because I was that fucking depressed, you should just reevaluate yourself as a person.

Nobody can ever take away the accomplishments you've fought for or the shit you've fought through. If people don't acknowledge that you struggled, that doesn't mean it didn't hurt. If people don't applaud your hard work, it doesn't mean you shouldn't be proud. If people ignore you, it doesn't mean you're not worth knowing any more than nobody photographing a sunset means that it wasn't an absolutely magnificent thing that happened to the world. It just means the world was too dumb and preoccupied not to stop and appreciate the beauty right in front of them.