Theme: The Meme. A rambling of self-pity, reflection, deep flesh wounds and new growth.

Have you ever stayed in a toxic relationship for like a really long time? Have you ever been gaslight-ed so often that you start to actually question your own sanity and challenge the memories you have of really clear events? It’s as though some rapports – when they are good, are everything. But when they’re bad, they’re as bad as they are good… and so, maybe you stay in them just to avoid the discomfort experienced when they’re gone… I wish I could point at one relationship and say I'm talking about him or her... but it's all of them.

I’ve eliminated a lot of patterns and familiarities around me lately. Maybe it’s repressed childhood trauma that is resurfacing now that my music has been taken from me- again. Seriously, I need to learn an instrument so I can accompany my own damn voice and not be so dependent on people and venues to be heard.

I’ve swung around blindly and torn away at the walls that have held me in for a while. I’ve also taken inventory of what’s good and what’s essential and have been trimming the fat. It’s alarming how this new catchphrase “essential” has taken new meaning in these apocalyptic times.  

But fat trimming and hollowing out ground isn’t always a relief-offering task. Sometimes, it’s a slight reprieve for built-up pressure and freeing from the blockage that’s restricted from full inhalation. Sometimes, it’s slicing away at a zit to only release half the kernel and subsequently exposing the flesh for new infection; a small bump now turned into an inflamed planet that takes over your whole face. Maybe if I had waited out the bump, it would have reabsorbed into my body but now there’s inflammation, healing and scarring. Everyone can see the process. It's hard to quietly mourn when you've been self-mutilated.

I have found some solace in that a few of the friends I’ve managed to keep around me are experiencing similar periods of reflection and mourning. Two of my closest miss men that held space in their hearts and beds that have departed. One sits on the ledge of her final year of her thirties and reflects back on what she has done and what's left to go. Did she do enough? Was she worth enough? Was she ready at this midpoint to go the next round, over the hill and into new adventures while fighting against time that pulls down at your skin and opportunities to start a family- if she ever wanted one, "make it big" or achieve much more than working and saving for when you can't anymore. It's mid-life crisis at its finest. Mine was a few months ago and now I sit at the grave of what I buried earlier this year. She is still picking out the memorial plots before she dives into the grief of lost dreams and disappointments in deep reflection and reinvention.  I have collected some of the memes that both of these women sent to me today and each one speaks to me as it did to them.

This one has been particularly difficult to swallow. My past has dictated my present. My father used to make me feel that I was hard to love. He made me feel that I was difficult and just like him and that only abusive people like him would get me and love me. I realized how many times I have heard that same dialogue in my present: that I am hard to love and aggressive and mean and difficult to communicate with and only a certain kind of person (the person screaming this at me) could handle my company and be so forgiving of the things wrong with me. After a while, you start to believe it, so you put up with name calling and abuse… because who else will love you but them? When you step away, you realize how many people know you even deeper and who only ever governed with love and acceptance: not despite who I am, but because of it. I pushed a lot of those people away for toxicity. What a fool.

When people call you names, assassinate your character, know your weaknesses and your push buttons and take any and every opportunity to push them and make you feel bad, it’s because they don’t actually love/like you. Believe them when they tell you they don't like you. They probably also really don't like themselves. Some of them truly believe it is YOU that made them unlikeable.

I used to think alcohol was the driving force behind some people’s behavior. When they started doing it sober, I realized the booze only put a microphone up to the bile that was already there.

Validating your experience and taking ownership of the behaviors that hurt you, even if that wasn’t their intention is so important.

The people in my life that I loved the most as of late have taken more time at figuring out how to argue with me than they ever took in validating me or building me up. Recently, I was in the 'winter of my discontent" and 'riding my own melt' and they called to bulldoze me down. I spoke about my own hopes and desires and was laughed at. I ended the conversation abruptly. I was sad and hurt. Those feelings were met with name calling, hateful, vindictive murderous remarks. It took the knife in my neck and decapitated me.

This is so relevant. I’ve allowed so so  so much. I’ve told people through inactions and complacency and ferocious loyalty that I was shit and should tolerate abuse, and they acted accordingly.  And yet, they surprised me every time.

I’ve been sad. I’ve been lonely. I, too feel like I have lost everything and live in fear. I commit to duty and obligation and I could scream loudly that I’m drowning and they’ll call me out as a bluff: point and laugh in my face, and then scream that they’re drowning and expect me to inflate like a safety raft. I always had this fear of being replaced in these moments of argument and separation. I've stumbled across the evidence that this fear was considered and yet it is I who is always being accused of such. Sometimes I think it would take me being replaced to ultimately walk away. Maybe the new person in my old spot will be temporarily wonderful and then fade into something with half my sparkle and maybe THEN I'll be recognized as someone of worth... And then again, why do I need people to validate my value? When will I heal this part of me?

  

Sometimes fleeing isn’t running from problems, but running towards salvation. I keep getting accused of cutting people off, and yet no one is really gone. Even my dad is a text away. The worst people continue to linger in my hallways, even if they don't participate in every hurt or holiday. I've been made to feel that abandoning that which is not serving me is giving up and a bad thing... but maybe I haven't made space for health because I can't let go of the painful reminders of what went sour? I've collected them like war medals achieved from bruises and amputations. Maybe the way to hold space for myself is to MAKE SPACE by trimming the fat?

And then again... it started off good. I was "everything" to a lot of people. I was so special, unique and the mostest, bestest everything. Well, I started great. So, was it all me? Is it my childhood trauma resurfacing in every moment where I am on the defense or could for once, I be organically responding to the way I have allowed others to treat me? Have I become the ultimate therapist in that I am reflecting back on what is being given to me? Must I always be the catalyst? The accused?

And maybe I haven't left, wallowing in the anger and aggression I am being accused of. I haven't not answered a text that wasn't just a slue of hateful bullshit. If it was genuine plea of need or information, I reply... Maybe I haven't done all the cutting off of which I am accused of? Maybe I have been maturely setting boundaries and have been wrongfully persecuted and labeled?

And isn't it interesting that people only seem to hear you when you've stepped so far back that they think you've actually gone?

Maybe it's time to take back the strength and fire within me and surround myself with fans of who I am.  Maybe I should stop trying to change myself to better fit into everyone else's stories. The people who have loved me for me have been the ones those other people I chose to be around instead- have historically ascribed ulterior motives to. My chosen ones have accused the good guys of being obsessed with me or in-love with me and those guys pushed the good people out of my life. The very people who accepted me, admired me and loved me- no matter what... and who didn't actually get much from me beyond my time... those are the ones I let go. I kept the people around who felt the need to always knock me down a peg to keep me "from being so arrogant" and in turn, kept me from being confident enough to live to my fullest potential.

Maybe my traumas, my reflections, my experiences have made me stronger. Maybe the people I chose to resign from haven't made me someone who "gives up on people she loves" but has made me start to love myself for the first time EVER and start to realize what I deserve? What I deserve isn't gifts and trips, but time and care and respect and admiration and a fucking break now and then when I struggle with human-imperfection stuff. Why am I expected to be super-human, humble and perfect all at once? WTF?

In this moment, my phone that took all day to update tells me I have an email and reminds me of constant love...even from afar. A girl who I could very well be foes with from the depths of shit we have been through and yet remains the constant in my life. Even the partners I've chosen who all fantasize about fucking her would normally make me want to push her away out of crazy jealousy, but I still choose her every time. Fierce loyalty with this one...

...And reminds me it's also OK to be petty sometimes in my hurt and that doesn't sum up who I am, it just describes my behavior in a moment. And that makes me human. And I'm entitled to petty moments. I'm entitled to slam doors and end phone calls abruptly and go through your phone and find fault with what you wrote about me and then apologize for seeing what I wasn't meant to see and unfriend you on Facebook and walk away in anger. And I'm ok with this. And you should be, too. Cause I'm worth holding the door open for and for you to say "you feel better now? Are you done with your childish episode? Can we move on with love now?" Because I have for everyone a hundred times and deserve that, too. I can't be superhuman, perfect and humble all the time. And I'm going to keep growing. And just because I didn't before, doesn't mean I won't tomorrow. I'm entitled to change: my tastes, my behavior, my friends, my weight, my politics, my preferences- all of it. It's evolution.


Ride with me, or don't. I'm worth it: whether or not YOU think so.