Confessional Moments

I've listened to Speechless three times, crying and sobbing on the way home, my blood slimmed with alcohol and my victorious attitude somehow entirely deconstructed into misery.

My mind shies away from the current drama. She was right, this slight girl and her brief friendship that, much like my night, imploded in a series of progressively heart-breaking moments. She was right about some things though. Drama surrounds me. Do I create it, unintentionally? If so, how do I quit? I hate it. I hate how it touches me.

Men and their confessional moments, followed so quickly by anger. It's exhausting and I don't welcome it. My walls can't seem to drop at all, without some backlash. I comb through my mind looking for positive examples, for men who have been kind to me, for men or boys who didn't hurt me or strike out, for boys and men I couldn't destroy with a look or a word -- anything healthy. There's very little.

I think of my brother, calling me "honey" in the store, pretending to cozy up beside me as a young, ugly unformed girl -- it was a game, convincing strangers I was his. I think of my father, smiling smugly to himself, informing me in the supermarket that people think I'm his young lover, a half-smile of pride that he could accomplish such a thing.

Sick, sick, sick.

I did not learn until I grew up how sick sick sick my relationships with men have been. I look back at those moment, so many moments where I was not a human, I was not me, I was validation, and I am disgusted beyond comprehension. Cut my thoughts away; I did not need to exist. I was a body, I was a form, a doll used to stroke unhealthy egos.

Even now, it seems, I am not my own entity. I am a measuring stick for self-worth. I am unique, I am strong. To catch me means they are more than they expected, more than they see in the mirror (they knew there was potential hidden).

To fail means I am a bitch.

I think of Dorian, who I wanted to love me, and the walls he and I threw up between each other -- his retreat and my subsequent coldness. Why love when I can't be loved back? Whatever I did to him, whatever strange chemical I put off, it pushed him away, and I responded by retreating. What a glorious painful joke in retrospect, to pull away from the only one I wanted to go all in with.

Although, considering it's been nearly a year now that my heart has been broken, I can't help but be grateful. I don't know how I would have survived. I crank the old stereo up and cry harder, drowning in self pity. I want to lash out so he knows how long I've struggled, I want to exist somehow again to him, even briefly, even if it repulses him, so he can't continue to shunt off his guilt. He broke me entirely and I'm still picking up the pieces. And I'm furious with myself for not being healed.

The rational part of my brain is trying to click on, soothing me, whispering logic and comfort. The rational part of my brain thinks he is sick, and hopes he finds wellness, hopes he is happy. I did love him, after all. Don't we want those we have loved to be happy?

It's a constant war. I am not quite ready yet. Maybe one day. Maybe one day I'll be happy for those who have wronged me, but right now, I feel my largest accomplishment will be neutrality. One day, I will not care. Right now, that feels like enough. To feel nothing, in either direction. A horizon I race toward.

One day I will see him in a store, and maybe I can smile politely. Maybe I'll do nothing, I'll walk away. I won't feel broken, I won't feel lost. I won't wonder why he didn't love me as much as he loves her, when to me he was everything.

These people who are always falling in love, how? How? I want to break into their heads and bodies and understand, because something is different. Like the people who enjoy haunted houses, I can't fully grasp it. How can you enjoy this? How can it pass so quickly? I want to pour us into test tubes and examine the differences under the microscope. I feel like something important eludes me.

It was fun, briefly. It was fun with the second one, the one who was kind to me and touched my leg and kissed me in public. I enjoyed falling in love with him until the moment I did, and felt myself become vulnerable. I hid that love and I buried it and I waited to see what happened, and the moment he showed me he may not be careful with it, I gathered it up and I took it away.

 I can't go through this again. I can't risk it.

And yet I'm lonely. I have accidentally isolated myself with my home and my career, with my flashing burning drive to succeed and make something of myself, this desperate scramble to fulfill my dreams because I'm not sure what else to do with my time right now.

And in that, I've made no room for anyone new.

Maybe this was another wall, in the end.

I want to put myself out there and love, and be loved back, but I hide in my home and I make excuses and I hunt out a future where I am successful because that, I know, I can never regret.