Perfect Imperfect Me

MY WRITING BLOG/STILL FIGURING LIFE OUT BUT MOSTLY ENJOYING THE RIDE

[xenobotanist]

Thinking about this conversation from Discord

[perfectlyimperfectly-me]

hi love. i'm continuing this writing therapy because i might be on to something, i think. i've noticed that i hate it when people (men) i date behave in childish ways. i've wondered why. maybe it has something to do with feeling that if they behave like children i can't depend on them but have to take care of them, like i was responsible for my parents, their emotional support figure. i like children, but i have this ideal in my head that men have to be mature and reliable and self-assured/confident, maybe because i'm not always? or because i'd love to depend on someone else except myself so dearly? in life i've always had to solve everything by myself and then it sucks when you find out that you don't have any other m.o. . that you fear or mistrust putting trust in others because you've been let down one too many times. damn it, but this hurts. and where is my therapist when i need her? and what is this sucky feeling of wanting you close and far at the same time?

[perfectlyimperfectly-me]

I'm afraid I like you more than you like me so I'm distancing myself already from you. Terribly unhealthy, I know. I told you, I'm not good at this relationship shit. I'm not good at laying open the vulnerable parts of my soft body, it's been hurt to many times. Can't you see the scars, baby? The crisscross hardened flesh, the scabs, the whip marks, the festering wounds? Can't you understand why I'm afraid of giving you the knife and letting you come near? The last person who I let this close broke and broke an broke me, and my heart is still a raw weeping mess. They called it depression, they called it anxiety, they called it a burn-out, a psychic decompensation, a hurt inner child. They urged me to open myself and show, show, show, and I did, and I learned that yes I am loved and accepted, but I still need to comply, I can't show this madness, this anger, people don't like it. I can be sad, but in a pretty way, not in a clawing open my arms and crying bloody tears way. Sometimes I don't want to be soft, I want to be hard and greedy and just take and take. There are days i starve my body, just because I'm not hungry, I don't feel the urge to eat. There are days I don't go outside, and then there are days I start walking and don't want to stop, and drive myself to go faster and faster and faster. Days I hate my belly for it's soft curve and hate my arms for being weak and hate my brain and I don't know how to trust myself, I don't know if you're good for me or not and so I'm afraid to let myself fall in love and I hold back even though i don't want to hold back, even though i want to go insane.

[lolmemez]

I need a little help here

[scentofdriedflowers]

me decoding and reading the message

[weltenwellen]

Mary Oliver, from “Hum Hum”, A Thousand Mornings

[perfectlyimperfectly-me]

It makes me insecure is all. When you're not affectionate back. I do not register it as teasing but as coldness, as rejection. And it hurts me. I want the warmth there was, and teasing has a fraught history in my family, often one of not meeting needs, of barbs disguised as mere teasing, of loneliness and misunderstanding. And so, especially in written text, it can have the opposite effect.

[quotefeeling]

“Sometimes we meet someone and are with them for a short time, yet somehow we write about them forever.”

— jcatmoonlight

[inkskinned]

i had been used for my body before, i didn't mind it. i had a good trick about it - i didn't have to be there, not in my skin. i could wear the mirror, wear the puppet. you would see your perfect girl, a little monster i had concocted. she would glisten, distilled out of my own blood and venom. it meant i would be using you instead - you think you are taking from me? darling, i think this is a fucking joke, a role i am playing. you can't hurt me, i'm not present for the event. this is just a body, like a book is only words.

and then you came into my life, easy and honest. reaching for my hand in the crowded holiday market. passing me a water before i realize i'm thirsty. checking on me once, twice - the first time i said i'm okay, you knew i was lying. i keep thinking about the shape of your blue eyes and the wild of your hair the last time i saw you. how you got out of my car and when you looked back, i was looking back too. your quiet breathing in a hotel room.

you kissed me like you meant it, is the thing.

i don't know how to be a person yet, not fully. i don't know how to let you kiss me and touch bone. i tell my friends i hate this so much i want to throw up. your name slips into my head - i am no longer really ever alone. a little frazzled heartrate keeps splattering against my collarbone. my therapist asked yesterday - why are you afraid? what is the cost of vulnerability?

a terrifying thought: when i'm with you, it feels like finally coming home.

[perfectlyimperfectly-me]

love breaks me. i lose control over the soft flesh of my body, my stomach fills up a cavernous pit of anxiety - does he like me like i like him, why isn't he texting, why isn't he being warm. feeling rejected and misunderstood and afraid of never quite fitting in has been a core wound my entire life, and love manages to put her fingers exactly on that spot and dig her nails in and twist and writhe and hurt me. i think of my parents and how what they have isn't what i ever want, the pure loneliness of two human beings in different rooms, feeling so much pain and anger and frustration each time their paths cross and they speak and they misunderstand each other. but then, what do i want? i feel like i never got a blueprint, and that is so terribly unfair, and also, i place expectations on love that are too heavy for anyone to bear. but i can't come out and say it right away, can i? that it hurts me so badly when you don't put a x on the end of a sentence, that it feels like you tore open a hole in my stomach and left me to die. that i want to bend and bend my spine until i break helping you, would jump into a car at 1am to come get you, and feel rejected and useless when you say you don't think i can help, but thanks. i would figure something out, but the point is, what hurt me so badly that i take that as a you're not good enough statement, instead of a i can't expect you to bend and break for me? the far healthier option, but i don't want healthy. i want to be consumed. i want passion too heavy to bear, flames that will burn us but are glorious in their blaze. i want you to touch me and kiss me everytime you pass me in the halls, even if someone sees. to hear you want to keep it professional at work breaks my heart in little pieces. how can you show restraint when i don't want anything other than to be near you all the time? now that you now you can have me, now you don't put any effort in anymore? i'm sick and tired and unhappy, i wish i felt as kick-ass and in control when love isn't around, or at least not drowned by insecurities and hurt but just a quiet, maybe boring sort of state. i hate you. i love you (maybe). i hate that i love you. the last one (the only one until then) meticulously flayed me open and burrowed inside my cavities and filled them and then left me empty and bleeding again, and now just looking at you hurts because i remember, and im afraid.

[memeuplift]

[labeatz]

You deserve people in your life who think you are a big deal. No competition, no backhanded comments, no jealously, no comparison, no hate just simply “I love you and there is nobody like you and there will only ever be one of you” type energy

[quotefeeling]

“When someone leaves you once, you expect it to happen again. Eventually you stop getting close enough to people to let them become important to you, because then you don’t notice when they drop of your world.”

— Jodi Picoult, Leaving Time

[hairtusk]

I think about this essay approx. 400 times a day

[lastyearscalendar]

[desert-palm]

[rocketplane]

@ms-demeanor

[ekingston]

sometimes i say things on twitter and then make a little graph about it

[quotefeeling]

“The idea of not being a kid anymore terrifies me. I am an adult and I have been hurled out of the world of boys and girls into the fray of men and women, and expected to function as a grown-up when I never functioned very well as a kid.”

— Kelley York