Raspberry Iced M

I am not a person who has ever been allowed to not know how to handle things.

I’m a person who – of her own choosing – grew up too fast, and then acted upon every urge to escape responsibilities I was not emotionally prepared to handle.

I am not someone who has ever been able to learn from a single mistake, but instead, I put the Mistake Playlist on shuffle and/or repeat, so that a series of the same mistake became a noticeable destructive pattern that many, many of my former friends and family members define as my character.

hurt → seek relief → act against values → shame → self-loathing → need comfort → seek relief again

I am someone whose decisions have negatively impacted many, but none as much as myself.

I am a person whose mind attributes production with love, and because other people, who are aware of my destructive patterns, assume that someone with my “character” is not capable of love, I have worked extra hard to prove those people wrong, which has turned my love into something transactional.

I brought tiny human beings into this world before I became whole, and I sacrificed and showed up and put my own healing on pause, so that now, all my children see when they look at me is a mess.

I have unintentionally wrecked lives because I was trying to “feel better.”

But intention doesn’t matter. Not to them.

And there are a dozens of people who watch me from afar now. No contact. No communication. No engagement. Just observation and a hope that whatever narrative they have written about me doesn’t change by my making better choices – because if I ever straighten myself out…if I ever do anything correctly…if I ever finally learn…their hatred for me no longer makes sense. Those are the same people who couldn’t be bothered to support me or show me kindness or give me grace, but were also standing over me to laugh when I fell down.

Early on, self-loathing became self-soothing. I convinced myself that being overly loud, overly obnoxious, and overly funny would hide my hurt and my insecurities. And I have been dishonest, off and on, my entire life, morphing myself into someone I’m not, just to feel like I belonged…because the Real Me? She doesn’t belong anywhere, except maybe a grave.

And when being outgoing and extraverted and hilarious didn’t attract the acceptance I sought, I tried the opposite – shrinking. Their needs > mine. I became low maintenance. Tiny. A doormat. I had no boundaries. And I ate crumbs with gratitude.

But when the crumbs didn’t satisfy my hunger for being chosen, or prioritized, or even considered, I sprinted to new crowds. New people. New men…whose interests I adopted as my own, whose needs I tried to meet so that a space in their lives was reserved just for me. But eventually, their attitudes about me ultimately became how I felt about myself.

Not once. Not twice.

Over…and over…and over. Not constantly. But intermittently.

And thus a destructive pattern. A metaphorical stamp of brokenness that has left spectators satisfied with their own opinions of me. My very own Scarlet Letter, forever reminding me that I was born into messy, I stayed messy, and now I am consequentially doomed to carry messy. Alone and without the support I have tried a hundred ways to earn.

Temporary relief is not relief at all, but that is a difficult observation to make when the relief is happening. So the first 20 years of my adult life were spent in irony as I ran directly toward a pattern I tried so hard to white-knuckle. The problem is that not once did that pattern ever scratch my itch. It only perpetuated the self-hatred I thought I was running away from.

There is no one to blame except myself for the people I’ve lost.

And that loss has presented itself in a similar, ironic way, because I once ate their crumbs. The discomfort I now force myself to sit in has created space for me to see that losing people who only offer crumbs may not be loss at all.

And now I keep my mouth shut. But I don’t hide. Now I reflect without white-knuckling. Now I accept abandonment and rejection instead of trying to fight it.

And I also understand.

For the first time in 20 years.

I understand.

That’s not important to anyone but me. Other people don’t care if I understand, much less care, themselves, to understand. And that is okay.

What I have done is wrong. Morally repugnant. Spiritually stifling.

I knew it the first time. And then second. And on and on…

But knowing that something is wrong and having the inner capacity to stop doing it are not always the same thing.

The people who left? They assume that my repeated betrayals mean I am evil, I am immoral, and that I didn’t care if I hurt people. And while that narrative holds a certain amount of water, human beings are so much more complicated than that type of categorization.

Something drove that destructive pattern. I merely attempted to solve pain.

1. I tried to meet a legitimate need in an illegitimate way. I wanted to feel validated, chosen, excited. I wanted to escape loneliness. I wanted a distraction from grief and my own emptiness. Real needs. Damaging methods.
2. What I have generalized as a destructive pattern started and ended, initially, as a coping mechanism. Instead of grieving rejection, I sought attention elsewhere. Instead of speaking honestly about how unseen I felt, I sought intensity in other forms. That’s not my character’s destiny. It’s just conditioning.
3. My shame for one decision fueled the fire for the next round. A vicious cycle with a detrimental outcome.
4. I was emotionally starving. It is natural for other people to judge a final act while ignoring the years I spent with unmet needs. I picked the scabs of every wound – loneliness, resentment, numbness…until I finally realized that vulnerability wasn’t an option.
5. As I’ve already established, I firmly believed that attention equaled worth. If someone needed/wanted me, I mattered. Each new pursuit felt like medicine. Only recently have I realized how expensive that medicine really was.
6. I was at war with myself. I knew it was wrong. But desperation overrode conviction.

I don’t ask myself why I was bad anymore. I get it now.

And I don’t seek support or acceptance like I once did. I have just realized that it’s probably not something I’ll ever have.

Instead I’ve answered questions so that I can identify my triggers.

What pain was I medicating? What need felt unbearable the longer it went unmet? What belief about myself kept seeking outside proof? What emotion was I not able to sit with? What was I trying to feel each time?

Knowing right from wrong increases responsibility. But it hasn’t put me in a place beyond redemption, even if that redemption does not come from those crumbs I mentioned.

Now healing looks like radical honesty without self-crucifixion. Identifying the unmet need beneath the reactive behavior. And learning how to meet that need myself.

I have made amends where possible. I have built boundaries against the old cycle.

And I am trying my best to accept that my past behavior is data, not my identity.

But convincing other people that I’m worth more than crumbs…that I’m worth a second (or third or fourth) glance…that I’m safe…is an unachievable goal.

So I quit trying.