Regretfully, Yours Truly

This is about love in all forms. It’s messy because feelings are messy. This is about how I come across—a flawed experiment.

Most of my life is waiting for the other shoe to drop. If it’s quiet for a few weeks, I start having a sneaking suspicion that God is really dead.

Reading my words isn’t the same as experiencing me.

I worry that the way I come across on paper screams “insecure and dramatic.” A woman stuck in teen melancholy. Like yes, I’m deeply insecure. But I am also like… sweet? Balanced in a way. I think a lot of people maybe even see me as confident? ‘Cause that’s what I at least try to project. Growing up, it was always “fake it till you make it”.

Fake it till you feel it.

I don’t feel it, really, at all.

But the good thing is, I don’t think most people can tell. And even if they can, I’d lie to them about it anyway.

I like to talk about my accomplishments. My degree, my writing, my independence—like little trophies I can hold up and say, “Look, I’m building something.” Proof that I’m more than just feelings. I feel like it gives me a solid leg to stand on.

Helloooo—I’m building something. Look at me, I can do it all. I’m big and strong and don’t need any help. 

Forgetting that it’s not really a compliment. It’s a testament to survival, sure, but I feel like it’s also a giant silent alarm.

Helloooo—nobody’s ever taught me love, so I’ve tried to cultivate it all myself. 

Helloooo—I look for it in everyone and am deeply cut when I remember not everyone is like me.

I want to write about more than just how much I actually hate myself. I want to write about how much I value your presence. I want you to feel as deeply for me as I do for you. I’m scared to say that out loud; I want you to know that.

I have a deep appreciation for the people that surround me. Even if they don’t feel the same, I value their gifts, their differences, their heart space. Because I’m constantly reminded that love is out there. In different forms, in different faces. I’m watching how they give it to others, I’m watching how others receive it. When it’s genuine, it’s so beautiful in its balance. It’s so ordinary and breathtaking at the same time. It’s the little things, and it’s crazy because when it’s the right person, it feels like everything. It feels like being seen. I watch others feel that way.

I watch some take it for granted. And I watch how few take it in. How it dances on their tongues ‘cause they’ve fed it to their breath. When they speak, it sounds like home. Not mine though. Maybe yours, maybe not.

It’s probably weird that I see it that way. It’s probably weird that I watch people like that. This is probably making you question my childhood. This is probably reminding you of yours.

I often say if kissing was platonic, I’d make out with everybody.

I hope that when you read those words—any of them, really—you weren’t just thinking about romantic feelings. I watch love in all its ways, in any way it shows up in the world. 

In college, there was this guy, and we were all sitting in a crowded dorm room talking. One girl was just rambling—she was the type to not notice that people didn’t want to listen to her. And even when nobody in the room was paying attention to her, he was. He nodded at her words, conversed with her back. I noticed that.

To me, it was a small expression of humanity. It felt like he was saying, ‘Don’t worry, I’m listening.’ As if he recognized that everyone deserved the room to speak. That’s probably just how I imagined it.

Yes, I did choose him as a romantic partner.
No, it did not work out.
It actually ended terribly.
He left me crying at the edge of a lake.

I try my best to choose those who show up for others in small ways, only to realize later that being charismatic can easily be just a show. They’re a projection. I’m a projector.

Helloooo—I’m trying to pretend to be a good person. You think I’m a good person, right? Do you want to suck my dick now?

The answer is no.
The answer is I bite.
The answer is, I’ve been in too many relationships, both romantic and platonic, that lack reciprocity so you have to get on your knees first.
It’s only fair.

I don’t know where I’m going now. Might’ve rambled too far off the edge.

The point is, I feel deeply misunderstood. I think people’s perception of me is so different from how I view myself.

The point is I get very jealous, ’cause I’m afraid of losing something that I felt like I’ve never had in its entirety.

Something I’ve never had without conditions. Something I’ve never had without feeling like I have to mold myself to meet an expectation just so people will stay.

I feel sick when I look at past versions of myself because I think what some people saw in me was a malleable girl. When in reality, I knew what was happening the whole time. I knew what I was doing, and I knew what they wanted. But the thing is, I didn’t care because I was trying to take any ounce of love, affection, or validation. I was worried it would all go away. I was scared that they wouldn’t like me anymore.

They all went away.

And I got stronger, in a sense. I’d like to think I learned harsher lessons faster than most. I feel those feelings rising in me now since learning to identify them, and as much as I’d like to conform—fall back into more passive habits, pretend to live in the delusion that someone really wants me for me—I use the same knives that have taken stabs at my heart, to cut around the edges of my character.

The same girl who observes love in all of its fantasies is still there. But she is also growing cynical, quick to detach. She is hiding the mushy, gushy parts because she is finding that in this reality, most people are stone.

Everyone else hides their true intentions, so why is it so bad if she does it too?

Reading my words isn’t the same as experiencing me.

In real life,
you would never know what I’m really here for.
You would never know that what I actually want is to be seen.
I’m afraid you’ll find that embarrassing.
I’m afraid that you’ll tell me I was never worth looking at in the first place.

You will have never met me. I’ve made sure of it.

I feed my name to my breath. It dances on my tongue.
And then I spit her out.

I’d rather reject myself—every version—before I ever have to ask if I was enough.

Thank you.