It feels strange and almost unfair? To feel the way that I do and to be experiencing what I am in the sense that I don’t know what I did to deserve what I am receiving currently, and I am not sure how long it is going to last. It feels as though I have been displaced from a completely different life into a new one. The imposter syndrome has almost completely taken over. My anxiety speaks to me on a regular basis, ‘you don’t deserve this, don’t get too comfortable, it is all going to come to a horrible end just as it always does’. But what if it doesn’t this time? What if for once I get to experience something good and it doesn’t leave tragically or violently like so many other things have in the past? Why does everything have to be so arduous? I am exhausted. I just want to rest and know that maybe when I wake up, everything is going to be the same. Maybe, for once, things aren’t going to be so drastically different in the morning.

My nervous system is firing so many things at once. My brain has already created a million different scenarios for all of these things. Eventually everyone finds out how much of a burden you really are and no one is going to want to stick around to watch the fallout of the inevitable breakdown. You don’t stay sane for long. Everything ends. Everything falls apart like the messiest taco except no one wants the mess left on the plate. Always discarded, always picking up the pieces for someone else to take the fixed shiny new toy away from them. Never the one to be chosen. It doesn’t really matter though. You weren’t and aren’t the type of person to walk away or sacrifice integrity for the sake of a friendship or relationship. Always back to the sword or fire. Taking heat for things that may not even be your fault. What even is reality? Do you know? Do we know? Can we trust our instincts anymore?

I can’t find the quote. It has made me ornery the last few days. I hate when I can’t find something that was right in front of me. Or think of the words that I read over and over again. The thing that I related to so deeply. The thing that spoke to my soul. Object permanence. Emotional permanence. Terms I didn’t know existed until I was trying to understand why I felt so lost in my own body and my own mind for so long. Why I didn’t understand why people couldn’t just relate to what I was feeling and why they didn’t understand why I needed so much reassurance all the time. Don’t they understand that what isn’t tangible doesn’t exist? And therein comes the inner child. Wondering why we are being put back in the dark room. The place we were put for so much of childhood when we were told our feelings and thoughts didn’t matter. That we were being too much. That we needed to be less. Shut down and close off your feelings. If you don’t have opinions, then you are non-confrontational. There is no reason to be so needy and emotional. We don’t express those in our house.

I think I have these issues where, growing up, due to the fact I didn’t really know how to express emotions (since I never did or wasn’t allowed to), here we are today. Choosing relationships where I get shut down, am invalidated, accused of things I didn’t do. Being afraid to express my emotions or becoming so emotional to even try to explain myself that it becomes a significant emotional event to the point that the other person feels that it is manipulation. So, again, I am forced to not express myself at all. To tamper down the pain and guilt and whatever else I feel in order to make them comfortable. To not be too much. To be amenable. Make the relationship work at the cost of your own identity. That makes sense right? Isn’t that why they have all worked out so well? Is that the realizations we are coming to? That you don’t have your own identity in relationships and so eventually the other person grows to resent you for never wanting to be your own person, but at the same time being punished for trying to do anything productive outside of the relationship because that is the cycle of narcissistic relationships. When you don’t express your feelings. You learn to just not at all and then stay in situations longer than you should. People have asked me why I put up with certain people, behaviors, etc. my whole life. But not one has ever asked me why I didn’t feel safe enough to leave.

Emotional safety. Something I haven’t felt for a long time. Something that is slowly coming back to me in the form of friendships and situationships. It is terrifying. It makes my heart literally beat a thousand miles a minute and it makes me want to curl up in myself and disappear. Sometimes when I think about what it would be like to be in a healthy relationship or what it would be like to really be happy, I have a panic attack or a migraine. Because it makes me feel so sick to my stomach that something like that could be possible, but it hasn’t happened yet for me. I love seeing my friends happy. I love seeing other people in thriving relationships and experiencing something that I don’t think is ever going to be achievable for me in a traditional sense. It makes me emotional in a good way. And in a melancholy way. I wonder what that would look like for me or if the person who would want to be with me would have the patience and stamina to want to put up with all my quirks/flaws. There are so many that I lose track. I think about what it would be like to share my life with someone again after having been alone for so long. It seems odd. It feels constricting. I wonder if it is possible to be with someone who accepts that I am someone who likes to be my own independent person, but wants to share that with someone else. Someone who wants to learn and grow with another person and help them achieve their goals and dreams. The best relationships form from friendships, but when you lose one you lose both and that is the worst kind of heartbreak.

It is almost the end of the year and there has been so much change and growth in my life, and I have never felt more grateful to be where I am currently. I have also never felt more lost and confused and anguished. I feel like there is so much I haven’t done and there is so much that I have left to do that I didn’t this past year. I feel like I have lived a hundred lifetimes and survived so many heartbreaks. When I think about it for a while it seems selfish that I should feel these things and then I feel guilty. That I should be so ungrateful for feeling these things when I have had such wonderful things happen this year. It is sad that when you are in survival mode, all you can think about is getting to the next day. Someone told me once that they didn’t understand why I wanted to take so many pictures and videos all the time. Why I wanted to document my life the way I was. Because there is so much trauma in my life that I sometimes forget that there were happy moments in my life too. It wasn’t all tears and suffering. I want to remember those. Every day is a chance to learn and grow. That is something I understand and carry with me. I am not going to compromise that ever again for anyone. I hope that I can find someone who understands that and if I don’t then it just isn’t meant to be for me. It is sad that I have so much to give and only a few will ever really get to experience it.

It is a once in a lifetime kind of thing, sometimes I believe it in myself. Sometimes I laugh and shake my head and wonder where the thought came from. The ramblings of a girl who just wants love, but doesn’t believe she deserves it. Thank you for listening anyway xxx