Would it be a surprise to admit that I’ve been struggling? I’ve been wanting to be good. I’ve been trying to make an effort to do the right things.
But through just…lots of things, from family issues to bad reactions with friends, I’ve come to just feel more and more like I’m drowning. Physical and emotional abuse…just the rejection of family and friends, and the constant reminders of how much I’ve caused problems, makes it hard to feel like I deserve love. More and more, I feel a lot like I shouldn’t be here at all. Knowing that I’m not wanted, I just begin to feel like I don’t deserve someone’s love. I don’t deserve family.
I’ve thought a lot about what it would be like without me, how much happier others might be. The thought that others are better off without me sometimes seems like one of the better ideas. I’ve thought about how and why I could and should…just stop existing. And sometimes I don’t feel like I deserve to be here to begin with. The thought that I’m just a continual reminder of what’s wrong, what’s bad, what’s unneeded and unwanted. Those comments that I’ve heard, and continue to take in seem to keep playing in my head, and I sometimes feel like I’m sinking into the darker words of what I’ve been called, what I’ve been told.
And then when I’ve reached out or gotten upset, and seen the reactions of others, I begin to see the ways in which I seem to destroy things around me. It just makes it hard to keep going sometimes. When I want to be better and I have things taken away and I am reminded how much I’m not worth the effort, not loved, not cared about I just…feel tired.
I feel like I’m too much.
Too much to handle, too much emotion, too much complaining. Too much in terms of being uncertain and afraid of what could happen that I just shut down and believe that I don’t deserve to be happy and I don’t deserve to have friends, love, family.
For a time, part of me wanted to be justified in being angry and lash out at others for it all, for the hurts, the abuse, the experiences that damaged and stung and made me bleed. Part of me wanted and wants to blame everything around me for what’s happened and how I can’t seem to figure out the ways to work through my feelings without feeling so insecure and uncertain and like I’m constantly ruining things by expressing myself.
That I’m detonating a bomb when I speak up about what I feel.
Or that I’m going to cause someone to hate me because I speak about my feelings.
Part of me wants to believe that I deserve to be upset, justified in sorrow. Part of me wants to believe that I’m in the right and I deserve something in return for what I’ve gone through, for how this has affected me, changed me, hurt me.
It doesn’t work like that though, and the minute I start thinking like that, the guilt sets in. The regret settlings, and I feel a horrible sense of sadness at the idea that I could or would want to be that angry.
A larger part of me doesn’t want anger. It really just doesn’t see the need for it. It just doesn’t believe I’m so good as to not receive judgment. Maybe the larger part of me feels I do deserve that criticism and that it’s valid.
And maybe it pushes those darker thoughts upwards as I sit with my failure and realize how much I still lack, how much I don’t accomplish and don’t understand, how much I still make others unbearably unhappy with my existence.
Because the largest part of me realizes that how I’ve reacted when faced with stressful things, with familiar behaviors might be frustrating to others because they’re insecure and highlight my inexperience at being human. Maybe I see better now how it could be damaging to others in many instances and no amount of hurt that I’ve experienced makes up for anything I might have done. It doesn’t justify it.
And that breaks me up a bit more and hurts me in a lot of ways that I realize are perhaps my own fault. Not knowing how to handle people, not knowing what to do or how to react, and struggling to adjust, makes me weak, I guess. Seeing people I care about act similar ways hurts me in ways that create triggers I didn’t expect and reactions I didn’t anticipate. But they’re my own and I needed to learn from them instead of giving into them.
And I guess I didn’t do a good job of that. And in the process, I drove people away. Perhaps my negativity, my inability, my stupidity have created frustration, anger, apathy…whatever it is, and a rejection of me. Maybe I just created a self-fulfilling prophecy. Maybe I have to face that and recognize it’s my own fault. I’m a failure in being better in working or existing with others, developing lasting relationships, and forming friendships. And sometimes it’s hard to not feel like I don’t have worth at all.
If I have hurt others in my inexperience with dealing with the uncomfortable lack of knowledge of how to be someone open or secure in who I am, trusting that I can and deserve love, then I never wanted that. But I see that I have driven people away through my vulnerabilities and my insecurities and the overbearing and overwhelming nature because I didn’t trust that I could or should just let things be.
I want to be better. But I am so tired. I know I can’t make amends for what I’ve done to others in the past, how I’ve been too much for them to handle, and how it’s created problems. But I just wish for a moment that I could. I wish that I had been better, seen something about how to do that, and understood how to work through those darker moments. I wish I could have made others happy and developed stronger relationships. I also wish that at some point I could have seen myself as worthwhile. Because I don’t know what it is that I have in terms of worth. I don’t know if I deserve anything. I don’t know if I do deserve anything or anyone. And if there was some way that I could go back and make it better for others, if I could turn things back and make it better for those who had to deal with me, I wish I could take that away from them, make it right and apologize for the hurts I’ve caused.
I wish I could apologize to you and let you know that I’m trying and I’m sorry for the problems I caused.
