My sadness, really, comes down to the little child in me who just wants SO BADLY somebody to love her, just as she is, in her whole, extended, wide open, wild, natural state.
She is so sad about all the people who she has loved, who left. Or never loved her at all. Or that she left, because running away seemed the best solution to the awkward.
Oh my litany of best friends.
And the regular stretches of spending my lunchtimes in the library, months at a time, pretending that I preferred it that way.
Not for me was that elusive thing of a real best friend, though everybody else could manage it. There was something about me that was, different.
"You're so..... different. It's a good thing!" they'd say.
Right.
So I gave up, after ten years of trying to be myself with the endless series of new best friends, interspersed with the long stretches of solitary and weird, I gave up. Took up arrogance and vanity as my armour.
"Yeah, I'm different" I thought sullenly, "it's called HAVING A BRAIN".
Just keep quiet, just fit in, don't talk too much, don't question things too much, let them think what they want to think, don't roll your eyes at their pseudo-philosophical bullshit "is there any such thing as true love, or does lust always get in the way?" while they cake on their suburban make up on the long train ride back to their mediocre lives in their mediocre suburban houses with their mediocre caravan-park holiday families and their mediocre endlessly replicable futures filled with narrow-minded, endlessly replicable thoughts.
No, no, no, just keep quiet, it's just for a few more years and then you'll be at UNIVERSITY where because there is an academic standard to get in the number of decently intelligent people will be much higher.
Then!!! A friend! A best friend!! A best friend EVER!!!
And we were, totally, devoted. Until she got sick of it and wanted to hang out elsewhere.
I think it's me... I'm too intense maybe.... Demanding... Maybe what I mean by 'love' is not what other people mean by 'love'. Oh.... SHIT.
Why not? Why can't I find somebody who can handle my love? I'll wish for it.
And I did, and he came. Oceanic and eternal.
But the reality is, with all of them, that once I loved them I very quickly started becoming what I thought they wanted me to be. My love made me fearful, so I protected myself by being
Funnier
Daggier
Cooler
More exclusive
More open
More rebellious
More glamorous
More earth-mother
Harder
Sexier
A hostess-with-the-mostess
Better matriarch
Better party animal
Better organised
Better nurse
Better cook
Better budgeter
Just, generally, better
Always trying to be better at whatever I thought they wanted me to be. Sometimes at what they told me they wanted me to be better at.
In the end, it never worked out.
Because I'm crying to be loved just as I am.
But never sharing who that really is, because I'm afraid it's not good enough.
The battle was really internal. The judges saying "No, you're not", and my deepest self saying "Yes, I am" but never enough to put it to the test out in the wide world.
So always trying to be something else that they love, and getting pissed off that they don't love ME.
And then, in the end, either I leave or they leave, disappointed. They're disappointed I'm not the person they thought I was, that I'm not the person I led them to believe I was.
And I'm disappointed they didn't stick around when they found out who I really was.
SEE??!! say the judges. WE TOLD YOU SO.
Oh, the pattern goes round and round.
