Here's what I know. I know that every day for god-knows-how-long, I have felt inadequate. Unable to be loved by anyone who does not do so out of obligation -- even though I am told, yes, that I am loved -- I don't feel it. It doesn't feel like it can possibly true because I no longer feel worthy of it. Because I am not worthy of it, it seems.
This past Easter weekend, I took a bad fall at a friends' house (why yes, I was completely sober in case you were wondering) --as many times as I've walked down that staircase to go to her room, I was pulling a suitcase behind me and it was dark, and I thought I was on the last step and well, I wasn't.
So I spent the weekend icing, resting, elevating…the whole bit. Every night we had tornado warnings. Easter morning, I was in the bed with my sister and two nieces and at 4am, our phone rang. Tornado. We yelled for her husband and we crammed into the laundry room with the girls underneath us…the moment passed, we discovered the easter bunny came and had a middle of the night egg hunt. That was probably the best moment of the weekend, one with so many not-so-good things scattered within.
This morning, I woke at 2am. My friend took me to the airport an hour and a half away for a 6am flight, and its 10am right now and I feel like I've already put in a hard days' night and I'm ready to go home and crash. My ankle is throbbing. My feet don't touch the floor.
We had a couple of talks in the car that made me feel like a completely ridiculous person, and that bled over into me having a complete meltdown in the airport at 5am. I called her and cried and sobbed (everyone in the terminal was just dying to sit by me on the plane, I am sure). I said that I feel like nothing I do is good enough. I can never, ever seem to catch a break and just be HAPPY, anywhere. Should I move back home? Well, that's not so fucking simple. I would have to rearrange my entire life, such as it is, and find a new job and move and, and, and. And for what? What if I fail again? What if I'm not happy there, here, anywhere?
I said to her in a choked out sob -- I feel like I am grieving. I am greiving for the life I could be living; the one that feels so impossible to achieve. And it's not as if I want to become the President of the United States or even the President of a company. I don’t give a shit about that. I just want to be happy. Find someone who loves me. Have my own family. I feel woefully inadequate in every.single.way because I don't have these things. I feel as though I can't be loved fully and in turn, I can't know love myself because oh oh, everyone says -you can't know love until you've pushed out a baby. You can try. You can huddle your body over your nieces little body in a tornado; you can change diapers and rub backs and rock and soothe -- but nope, you just can't know THAT kind of love. The real true kind.
And I'm sure that's true. Why would I have succeeded at that? It just doesn't to be in the cards for me, and its time to lower my expectations -or perhaps just change them- and accept that my life isn't going to be a fairy tale. It will not be full of me dancing in the kitchen. I'm not going to have someone love me like everyone seems to have. I will learn to tell myself that things may not --will not-- turn out the way that I had hoped.
I've tried so hard. Harder than anyone knows. Nothing is working.
So here's what I can't do for awhile -- this blogging thing. I can't read every day about babies saving and changing lives. I can't hear about how days were crummy but you went home and looked at your kids or your lover, and re-found your purpose. I can't read about the myriad of ways life is complete for everyone else, thereby making mine seemingly incomplete because I feel it enough everyday. I don't read a single blog that doesn't have this underlying theme, and I just can't do it anymore. I feel inadequacy and regret in my very bones and grief has settled onto my chest in a major way. I am truly happy that everyone else has found that magic and joy and love, but I have not and I probably will not, and for today -- I have to just learn to accept that. And do what I can to protect myself --it's all I can do.
See you on the flip side.
8 comments:
"You cannot prevent the birds of sorrow from flying over your head, but you can prevent them from building nests in your hair"
~Chinese Proverb~
Even if both of us loving you doesn't count, we still do.
You know- as wonderful as my life is, it doesn't prevent me from having such deep sorrows sometimes and that somehow makes it even worse, I think. To have this almost perfect life and still despair.
I wish I had an answer for you. I wish I had a magic crystal ball to look in and then look up at you with the news to report that soon, soon, someone is coming with whom you can share your dreams.
I do believe that, though. In my heart, I really do.
You are loved, you know. You really, really are. And you know what love is. Oh yes, you do.
Go see what I wrote tonight. Please.
Sweetie. For the longest time I felt the way you are feeling, every day, every day, with a crushing despair. Let me tell you my finest advice ( and i don't know what that weighs, i don't .. ) :
do something BIG.
what this could mean, i don't know. i DO konw that getting 'knocked up' and nineteen right when I had just escaped my dad and had NO money, no high school diploma, barely a soul- this was the thing that changed my life. But the point of it really isn't about the BABY. it's about the fact that something HUGE happened to me and instead of looking at it as this big tragic thing and ruining my life, i made up a story of what it would be in my head, the ENTIRE time i was pregnant, and i made. that. story. happen.
so move, like my friend RIch did, when his heart was broken, to Thailand. he found happiness there, joy. WHY NOT.
or have a baby! with a sperm donor.
or adopt.
or join Peace Corp.
or start a nonprofit about something that sets you on fire. for me, it's abused children.
or sell everything you own and move into a trailer and travel.
OR? YOU tell ME?
just don't disappear. i value you here online and i love your mind spirit and sweetest of hearts.
but if you DO disappear, don't do it in 'real life' too, because you are damn valuable and wonderful. i didn't have anyone who could treat me like that for yearrrrs. it's only been the last eight years and even then, not the whole marriage, that these things were mine.
hang. in. there.
you are not alone in being alone.
make change.
love.love.
Oh, I wish so much for you. I wish for the cloud to rise, and for your job to fill you with purpose and pride and for someone you deserve to finally see you there and love you the way you deserve. I've only known you a short while here, and yet I can see how special and true you are. You're the real deal. Maybe DC isn't the place to find your someone, but I'm not sure that home is either. So many times it is the happy accident that changes our lives. Where was Mr. Right with the handkerchief in the terminal??? I'll be thinking about you, even if you're not around the blogspots, hoping good things come your way soon. You've waited long enough. Hugs.
take that road less traveled. i happened by once before and i applauded you for having the courage to GO FAR, which i never managed to do for long enough. now i am applauding you again for the courage to say unabashedly how you feel. i found my love returned to me in the helping of others. there are more ways to find it than popping out a kid. you WILL find yours. so stick to the side roads and be well wherever they take you.
xxmissalaineusxx
Maggie,
I've looked at many of those options, then put them off as "someday." It seems as though perhaps the time is now.
Mel,
Thank you so much for this and what you wrote on MM's comment page. I am lucky for knowng you, and I am truly grateful for you. Thank you for wishing good things for me -don't stop, and I won't stop wishing them for you,too.
Miss A -thank you for stopping by. I truly thank you for your words. Thank you for giving me something to clutch in my hand.
oh Steph. Thank you for writing this though I'm sorry you have to feel it. I know what you mean about protecting yourself. I feel that way just reading dumb facebook about husbands and children and oh in the summer it gets worse, picnics and baseball practice and swimming lessons...
I think though we are different in the sense that I don't even feel capable of having these things, a husband and children, a family...I don't feel capable of even going on a picnic with anyone but myself. I feel so afraid of everything and I just waste and waste my life. But so I don't think I let myself long for things in the way you do. I think it must be worse to feel so ready like you are and yet can't seem to make it happen. I've really never been able to make anything happen, but I've never felt ready for anything either. Ugh.
Anyhow I love you and think you are brilliant and lovable and I am singing you that Indigo Girls song "Love will come to you..."
Post a Comment