Picture a 13 year old girl. Full of hope, optimism, light, and love. Something not a lot of pre-teen girls usually have. It’s a weird and awkward time in our lives, and usually we’re so confused that sometimes we’re too confused to be really happy. Picture that girl finally being chosen by a boy after always being the last choice, after all the boys choose her friends first. Now picture that girl a few weeks later, blissfully happy that someone actually likes her. Imagine that boy sitting on the bus exactly 2 seats in front of her, having the girl behind him and in from of her, telling her that he wants to break up, for the other girl also in the seat in front of her.
Imagine the blow to my self esteem. The worthlessness that I felt was probably much too much for my age, but always for years rather than seeing it as a lack of compassion on his part, I always saw it as a lack of well, anything and everything, on my part.
Now imagine a year later that she meets a boy that she actually wants to commit to, but she know she’s not quite ready. Then after that it’s just a string of boys who can’t commit to her. Each blow taking a tiny piece of her heart, wondering if she’s bound by the universe to always fall into the arms of people who will always drop her.
Imagine now that she finally meets someone that she ACTUALLY thinks could mean something. And it does. and then eventually it ends, mutually, because it’s for the best. She’s not heartbroken because she knows it’s for the best, and it was the best year of her life (even if it wasn’t exclusive). Imagine that boy going through immeasurable amounts of pain and loneliness, only to call her up to talk about wanting to kill himself. After many attempts to calm him, he hangs up, and doesn’t return any phone calls or texts. He’s overseas, so there’s not really anything she can do or anyone she can call. Another year passes, and he randomly shows up in her life without so much as an apology or explanation, let alone a hello. Another hefty blow to her worthiness.
Then she meets a man, who she falls in love with. Her first love. Tender, sweet, passionate, and so deeply caring. The first person who could see past all of the hard exterior and see a battered girl who still somewhere had a lightness and softness to her. Someone who took the time to harden and dirty his hands to help her work on herself. Another mutual ending. Full of heartbreak, but a completely necessary action to take at the time.
Through the next 6 years following, she felt plagued again by falling into the arms of people plagued to let her fall.
The longer that I have been single, the more I have fallen in love with myself and my solitude. So much so that when good things start to come by, I start to get scared of losing that solitude and having a complete change in my life and routine. But then when I ruin it, I come home to an empty bed, and the tears cannot stop flowing. I have become so inexplicably hardened and scared that I will always have this ebb and flow. That I can’t let myself be happy but I’m also terrified to let someone in. To see all the ugly scar tissue. To face all love I have to give but all the insecurities about myself that I still can’t somehow face. I’m scared I’ll never be able to face them alone. I’m scared the there is no light at the end of the tunnel.
Meliorism and 20's sadness 