Dear beloved readers,
I am afraid the tables have turned and today, I am the one out here seeking advice from you guys with everything I have. I’ve never been very good at asking for help if I am being honest, I’ve always been the good listener and the one who will throw her two cents in there whenever she has the chance, often enough required advice but sometimes, I may have done the unspeakable and given my opinion even when not requested, which just stinks. I’ve always been one to completely loathe this sorta behavior, so when I started this blog that is basically a big rant about my life, I was terrified people would give me their two cents on everything I choose to share, hence why I’ve been so apprehensive to share what I am about to share with you guys, and this time, I am counting on your help not your judgements.
When I was a kid, I was obsessed with anything even slightly romantic. I remember one time I even missed school because I cried too hard watching The Notebook on a school night and the whole thing just made me so emotional I thought I was going to die, so emotional I told me mom I was sick and wouldn’t be able to go anywhere that day. I spent the whole day in bed actually reading The Notebook and after breaking my heart again, I had a big epiphany. Love, for a long time, seemed like a very abstract concept for me, but as you grow older things start to make more and more sense even if at sometimes, it feels like the opposite. That day I didn’t figure out what love was, but I figured out that I would never stand if anyone just “sorta” loved me, I wanted the kinda love that I would want to turn into a book that would set my soul on fire.
It’s funny I say this, because as you guys know, when it comes to love and relationships, I have a rotten taste. Maybe I’ve always wanted things to be harder than they are supposed to be, maybe it’s just what I do because I am addicted to suffering, through all the insights I’ve had on this situation they all somehow lead me to the same conclusion, I am absolutely fucked when it comes to this. Which is not what the girl who was crying reading Nicholas Sparks would’ve wanted for herself, but at some point for this girl, life got pretty rough, and pain was all she allowed herself to feel and surprisingly enough, the line between hurting and healing is basically invisible.
So it’s safe to say that when it comes to past lovers, I wasn’t very good at choosing the right ones. I feel like part of me liked too much the idea of them being trouble and with my Wendy Syndrome I just figured I would fix them. Me. Of all people, the person whose first instinct is to always cry, had the audacity to think I actually had the power to save people. Sounds ridiculous on paper, but my mom – who is a shrink – once told me that I have this need to save people because I could never truly save myself, which hits hard every time I think about. And now I am crying a bit, bloody great.
The fact is, one time I found a dead bee in a swimming pool, it was clearly dead, drowned by the chlorine and the unapologetic urine, it never even flinched, you know like bugs sometimes do when they are half dead. I still couldn’t stand it, found a leaf somewhere, rescued the poor, very dead bee, and buried it in the garden and cried for two days straight. My mom says that’s when she realized I would always need to save everything that was not up to me.
And it’s true. While I was with the problematic people from my past, I felt like I was giving them everything they needed, everything I thought I would like to have in a partner. But like I said, the line between healing and hurting is invisible. So for some, I became the girl who overwaters flowers because she doesn’t know when to stop giving, for others I became the one who is always complaining about the bruise she left on the peach by holding it too tightly, and maybe at times even the one who only cared about bees when they were drowning and there was nothing she could do about it anymore. A lot of metaphors here, but in case you are following, and I hope you are, I was never what they needed, so in the process of fixing them, I started to break myself.
It’s a sad realization, I have to admit. I remember writing on my journal just last December how I felt like none of the people I’ve ever loved, loved me back. And as the concept of what love truly is keeps evolving inside me, I come to terms everyday that “love” may have been too much of a strong word to describe what those pseudo-relationships were. Doesn’t mean the pain I felt didn’t shape me in some way, and right now I feel like maybe I am broken for good.
Okay, here it goes: I met someone beloved readers, and he is everything. There’s no way to describe the feeling of being excited to wake up at 8am just to catch him on the phone, the way he listens, the way he makes me laugh. It’s a lot, in the best possible way. But for some reason, maybe PTSD, maybe self-sabotaging at its finest, maybe I just turned into what I feared the most: one of the ones who hurt me in the past, but it’s been hard not to fuck everything up. It’s true, I am having a hard time being a good person, someone deserving of someone good, having a hard time holding back from this toxic behavior I guess I learned by mirroring the people from my past, and for the first time in my life I am sure that I don’t need to do such thing, I don’t need to keep my walls firmly wrapped around me, I don’t need to be tough, I don’t need to be anything other than who I am. But in the end of the day, who I am is still someone in the making, someone with a lot to figure out, someone who needs a shitload of help.
And we all hear those things, that broken attracts broken and I’ve never felt so unlovable before, because choosing trash when you think you only deserves trash is easy, but then meeting someone who is absolutely everything and knowing you are probably not good enough? That shit kinda kills. He does more for me than I could possibly ask for. He prompts me with solutions whenever I can’t see straight from the dramatic fog in my brain, he makes me feel so good, and cared for and somehow deserving of all of this. And I don’t think I am good enough for him, and not saying this in a self deprecating way, but he is just so amazing that I don’t think theres a word to describe someone like him yet. The whole point of life is evolving and becoming a better person, and I can tell that I am restlessly working on this, everyday I wake up and I try to let go of my toxic traits that are not by any means character worthy. But why is it so hard to let go of this little voice in my head that reassures me that this is too good to be true, that I don’t deserve this, that I will end up so broken from this that there will be nothing left for anyone, not even Tony during long coffee dates, to try and piece together afterwards.
I wanna apologize for how depressing this is turning out to be but I’ve been crying for a few hours now and there’s nothing I can do but be my truest self in here, as this is my space. I wish I could go back in time and save myself from all this trauma that I had to go through to learn nothing but a couple scumbags that only brought me sadness and a couple stamps on my passport. I wish I could fix this whole thing and magically turn myself into someone I know he would love and want forever, not this monster I feel like I become everyday. I actually wish I could call Dr. Freud to ask what the fuck is up, why this trauma is eating me alive and holding me back, why I cannot do things right, why do I keep destroying everything I touch? Too many questions for that old pervert, I know.
The help I need, beloved readers, I don’t think anyone can actually give me, it is yet another thing I will have to learn by myself. Tony told me I am doing my best at the moment and that I should give myself some credit for at least recognizing my toxic behavior and that she knows I will try to be better. This may be coming from someone who knows me better than I know myself but doesn’t comforts me too much. It’s just weird to be in the other end, and I never thought I would be the problematic one in a relationship, the one who needs fixing, the one with a lot to learn. He is patient, he is kind, he is the best, and maybe it’s too soon to get into that, as the concept even though clearer still isn’t quite there yet, but maybe he is the one. I want him to be the one. What he makes me feel is something I never thought I wanted, but turned out to be exactly what I needed.
I just watched a bunch of interviews with Idina Menzel and she said that throughout her career she was blessed to play complex characters that are always in conflict between being strong and being vulnerable. That hit me pretty hard as I’ve always related to every single one of her characters but never associated this to being the reason why. I do have a hard time opening up and letting people in, which is why it felt so strange, amazingly strange, when I let down my walls and allowed him to see some of it, not everything but certainly more than what I usually am down to show. This vulnerability almost killed me but I know it was necessary, I spent years longing for this and now that I have it, I cannot fathom to lose it because I am too scared of getting hurt. When in reality you guys are the ones who know the most about me and that’s only because I don’t have to tell you shit face to face. Which probably makes me more traumatized than I anticipated, but c’est la vie.
My point here, the reason for this whole thing was to ask advice from you guys, because frankly I cannot stand the thought of losing him because of some stupid thing someone whose face I don’t even quite remember, did to me so long ago but I cannot seem to be able to forget. Because the good parts they always fade too fast and what stays is the stinging reminder that nothing was ever even close to perfection and you are left alone with more to figure out and put together than you first anticipated, and it’s the worst feeling on earth to realize that you just gave yourself utterly to someone who never even claimed they wanted it to begin with.
And I know I won’t be making this mistake with him, because he is not like that. When I told Tony this she too gave me a little eye roll, that I am sure you guys are giving me right now. It’s just different, it’s hard to explain but it kinda feels like the best thing I’ve ever felt, better than new shoes, better than when Idina Menzel hits that note in the end of Defying Gravity, or the ending of Breakfast At Tiffany’s, better than stepping in New York for the first time after a long time, better than the feeling we get when we laugh too hard and our stomach hurts and we just kinda hope the moment will last forever. It may be even better than coffee, and that’s coming from someone who drinks an obscene amount of this energetic liquid per day. All of this is hard to explain, to put into words, even for a writer, in fact I think this may be the most confusing post I’ve ever published here, and may I remind you guys I’ve once compiled all my teenage years in a memoir…But it goes something like this.
Meeting your soulmate is like walking into a house you’ve been in before – you will recognize the furniture, the pictures on the wall, the books on the shelves, the contents of drawers: You could find your way around in the dark if you had to. And maybe it’s too soon to call him that, but it feels very right and I don’t want to deny myself this, I need to stop denying myself good things because I still am punishing myself for who I used to be, I need to forgive myself and embrace the reality. That is I may actually love him, and that freaks me out, it is bitter, it is super sweet, and I never want to go through life without this again.
I am not sure what to say anymore here so I will just say that whatever you have to give me from this I will gladly take. College is back, life is crazy and I am in love, and that’s all you have to know now. I love you guys, thank you for letting me trust you all with this one, and hopefully I will learn how to treat him right as he is not like the pigs from my past, he is perhaps the missing piece I never thought I would find. Stay out of trouble, unless said trouble is actually falling in love, and since that feels fucking incredible, just tell me all about it.
– Your Girl on the Go