Every so often I come back to this. Insecurity I wrestle with - and will wrestle with for the rest of my life. I don't know if it's a brutal fight for attention, or if it's a deep need to know that I am loved. My guess would be that it's both. Either way - I'm spent.
I am the first person to admit my familiarity with emotion. I FEEL everything. And typically, I am easy to read and willing to share information about myself. But this is the thing few know. I am a master at hiding it. It is a well crafted disguise. It is the thing I can actually keep my mouth shut about. The unfortunate thing is that I want to hold it against you for not knowing. I spend immeasurable amounts of energy keeping it from you, and I resent you for not figuring it out.
This happens when I am aching in a very deep part of me.
I'd like to blame it on others who have wounded me in the past - but I know better. It is my flaw (as if I had just the one).
The truth is this: I am hurting. I feel a little lost. I feel a lot abandoned. I feel pushed to the outside. I feel used. I feel unimportant, forgotten, and tolerated. It's not about what you say - its about what you don't say. I am very good at being "that" girl. You know, that girl you call when you feel lost, when you need a shopping buddy, when you need to vent, when you're having boy troubles, when you need advice. You know you can call me at 3am, and you feel the freedom to torment me about 3am phone calls. You know I'll make you dinner, you know that - by the wonderful grace of God - I will be ready to encourage you in your trials. I am the one you want your girlfriend to learn from, but you are outspoken about how you would never date me.
I am a giver. It's just once in a while I slip into bankruptcy and all I have to give are bitter U.O.Me's. I wait. I call. I write you letters. I pray. I inquire. I seek out. I teach. All the while I love you for pretending that you need me. Honestly - I love you regardless (I am just fearful of admitting that because I am unsure if you'll hold it over my head). But the sting of learning that you never did need me is unbearably scalding.
I want it to not bother me. I want to not care. I want to not feel and not need. So I remind myself that you don't mean it personally, and that I expect too much from you. In the process, I lose my voice from screaming for your attention. I don't sleep because the ones I love - the ones who used to be my rock - are becoming less and less dependable and they are hurting. They are hurting and I am mad that I don't have anything to give anymore. I listen to this song over and over; its a terrible thing because it feeds my self-pity but I refuse to part with it because it says exactly what I can't. My temptation is to withdraw the investment I have in you, put my walls up, and keep things shallow.
I'm desperate for approval. I wear this ring pretending that I am patiently waiting for a hero when really, I stomp my feet and weep because I don't understand why so few get all that's good in me. Why so many get what, for some reason, I am not allowed to have.
I try to make you love me the way I think you should, but it never works. And I refuse to show you how you've hurt me. I sing along: "don't pay no mind to my watering eyes... must be something in the air that I'm breathing." I know it's insecurity... you don't have to tell me that. I know that you are all so tired of dealing with difficult me. But it is so hard for me to shake the need I have for you to know that I need you, and my heart is aching at the realization that you don't.
Try to ignore all this blood on the floor...It's just this heart on my sleeve that's bleeding.
2 comments:
Post a Comment