I think I realized some of the reasons why love feels terrifying to me
Like, yes I already knew that the phrase “I love you” has felt synonymous in my life with “I want something”
And I knew my mother was an emotionally immature person
And I knew my father treats people like objects- but that is a kind of love, just not the kind that is good for people. Like, my dad loved his first car- blew it up twice, rebuilt it 3 times (because the second time he decided to do it by himself without the manual, but 🤷🏻)- he still occasionally cries about that car.
But after it had outlived its usefulness, he got rid of it just like everything else in his life. His wives, #4 and #5 after not getting the monetary support he expected if he were to take them in instead of shipping them to their semi-estranged father and cutting them out of the family they grew up in, me and #2 off and on, #3 for a while. Getting there with #6 as well. His friends when things get hard, the job he had seniority in and had been in for 15 years when he decided he wanted to move to a new state over a weekend.
The shitty part is, since that kind of love whether for things or people makes him feel the same way either way, he doesn’t put in the effort to make a distinction.
Like with Cru- the people who considered themselves to be upper tier material spoke At the rest of us, not To the rest. it lack the reciprocation that relationships between living things has. At least I can definitively say that my father didn’t treat his dog better than his kid- never had the nerve to follow through with shooting any of the kids, he also didn’t lock his cabinets and fridge, so we were allowed to eat at meals, unlike the dog sometimes. That story about his aunt’s roommate’s kennel baby-from what I hear Baby was taken by Services and adopted at a very young age and might not even know that part of their origin, so- probably haunts him too much to stoop that low.
But if someone who says they love me can act like my father and expect things like my mother, how can I trust new people who say they love me not to sometimes be horrific monsters too?
