untitled: a series of irrational fears

when did everything change? when did i realize i want all of those things i swore off from the start? love, marriage, children. all of those things i was so certain were the last things on my mind. well, i can probably narrow it down to last august, seeing my nana almost die in a hospital surrounded by her family. or maybe it was turning 25. or maybe it was seeing one of my best friends decide to finally get married. am i just one of those girls who reach a certain age and realize my biological clock is catching up to me?

i think if i’m completely honest with myself, i’ve always wanted those things. somewhere in the back of my mind i knew i wanted to be in a loving relationship with someone who took the plunge with me and decided to live a life of dedication and devotion to one another. to raise a family. i think i’d make a good wife. i think i’d make a good mom. or at least i’d try like hell. 

but i’m not stupid or naive about life. i know i would never do either of those things with someone who doesn’t believe in them as much, if not more than, i do. i know i want to have kids, but i also know kids need stability and that that’s not something i have to offer at this point in my life. i get that. but the more i think about life in general, the more unsure i get. am i going towards those goals? am i on the track i want to be on? is that even something i can be heading towards? love happens. life happen. sorrow happens. those are all things out of our control.

i’ve been with my boyfriend for almost three years. that’s a long time. i know him like i’ve never known anyone else. i feel like i know him more than i know myself, at times. yet the thought of a “forever” with him freaks me the fuck out. he’s the first guy i’ve ever been serious about. he’s the first guy i’ve ever let see me at my best and at my worst. he’s the first guy to know virtually everything about me. and he’s stuck around. but i’m still unsure about us. this has less to do with him than it has to do with how i’m naturally wired to be. i’m a skeptic to the very end. but i’m also human and the thought of being with only him for the rest of my life scares me. what if he’s the last person i ever have a first kiss with? what if he’s the first, only, and last person i ever have sex with? what if i never have those incredibly scary but thrilling intimate first impressions with anyone else? those late nights where you stay up until 3 in the morning talking on the phone unwilling to hang up because you can’t get enough of them. that feeling of an electric shock pulsating through your body when your knees accidentally brush up against each others for the first time. that moment when you say goodbye to them and both of you want to go in for a hug but are terrified to make a move. am i ok with those things coming to an end? am i ok with them never happening to me again? i’m not sure. and i don’t know if that uncertainty is certainty enough or if it’s normal to feel this way. 

i’ve always gone for a calm and collected kind of guy. a guy that exudes confidence and coolness. guys who were overly into me never made me say, “now that guy makes me weak in the knees.” at the time, it was a conscious choice. the quiet guys were the ones i longed for. the ones who were impossible to read. this led to many years of heartache and uncertainty about myself. self-doubt and super-self-conscious habits overcame me. because the quiet guys don’t give you reassurance. something i soon realized i NEED to survive in a relationship. it turns out i do like being swooned over. i do like being fussed over. i do like being outwardly adored. and this has been one of the major hurdles in my current relationship. we aren’t a lovey-dovey couple (unless i’m drunk, in which case i can’t keep my hands off anything). we don’t outwardly express our love for one another. we’re different when it comes to expressing our love to even each other. and that’s been really hard for me. sometimes i need to feel wanted. i need someone to literally look me in my eyes and tell me they want me. i need for someone to look me straight in my eyes and tell me they love me. those are things i know about me now. and i didn’t necessarily know that about myself when i first met my boyfriend. he expects me to be able to know these unspoken assurances through his actions. he’s not the type to harp on anything, not even if it’s how pretty i look on any particular day. he just doesn’t verbalize many things in general, but that was one of the things i initially liked about him. ‘he’s quiet’ or ‘mysterious,’ were my thoughts. and that made him a challenge in my eyes. i never expected to fall in love with him. i never expected to need him the way that i do. i never expected to want him the way that i do. but loving him and needing him and wanting him doesn’t make our relationship easy, especially when you’re always unsure of where you stand because the other person just doesn’t show you in the tangible way you crave. 

ok, another thing. i don’t expect relationships to be easy. maybe i did going into it, but that was before. and it was easy. as all relationships start out, until you get serious and realize you’re not just thinking about yourself anymore but also this other person. you want them to be happy, but you also want to be happy. but sometimes certain things agitate one person’s happiness and not the other’s. and as the internet constantly reminds me, THE STRUGGLE IS REAL. and then you realize this slew of other things that don’t align with these relationship ideals you previously set forth. you realize that maybe you aren’t on the same page about everything and maybe you don’t want all of the same things as the other person. but you do know you still love the other person and don’t want to give up just yet. and that turns things into a huge mess of confusion. not all the time, but it’s always there. again, is this normal? like i said, this is the longest relationship i’ve ever been in. also, i’m a skeptic. still. 

amongst all of the difficulties i continue asking myself, ‘is this worth it?’ and i’ve yet to come up with anything but a yes to that question. we’re never going to want all of the same things all of the time, but ultimately, i’m okay with that. right now, today, i’m okay with how things are. there is no one i trust so completely the way i trust him. i’ve never for a second doubted his devotion and loyalty to me. he gets along with all of my friends. he’s easy going, kind, and respectful. i don’t know a single person that has anything bad to say about him. my family loves him (moreso than they love me, it could be argued). he’s a perfect fit into my incredibly dysfunctional and complicated family. he’s understanding and nonjudgmental. and above all, he respects me and is kind. he’s never said anything to intentionally hurt me (or anyone else). he’s always giving people the benefit of the doubt (which i admit is incredibly annoying to me, who tends to do the opposite). 

i don’t believe in “soulmates” or “the ones” because i’m not living in a romance novel, but i do believe in timing. and fortunately, we have that going for us. and i’m not a believer in “love is enough” because honestly sometimes it’s not. but when i look at us and what we’ve been through, i think of how lucky i am. i mean, i’m a pain in the ass and require a lot. and he’s always trying. and i can’t fault him for coming short sometimes, because he’s never not given me his all. sometimes (most times) i don’t think i’m worthy of someone like him, but that doesn’t mean i’m not going to try my hardest to earn that. i want to be better. he makes me want to be better. and not just to him, but to all people.

basically, life is hard. i know that. and my mom was right (as much as it pains me to admit), life is definitely not fair. but i’m going to keep on fighting and trying because that’s what it’s about, right? perseverance. struggle. sadness. happiness. if i give up or run away when times are hard, what kind of precedent am i setting for myself? if you love someone, you fight. you push against the current, especially if the reward is worth it. earning someone is better than winning a lottery. knowing i did the hard work it took to make things work is love. it’s sweat and tears, and never what you expect. but sometimes, that’s what makes it worthwhile. or at least that’s what i tell myself on days like this (skeptic). i’m just trying to believe in something that doesn’t come natural to me, and at times it seem impossible. maybe we’ll work out and maybe we wont, but at least i tried and put myself out there and gave love a real shot. and i’m learning from my mistakes. maybe someday, i’ll get all of those things i crave and desire. maybe someday i’ll be someone’s wife. maybe i’ll be a mother. maybe i’ll be a grandma. but for now, this is enough. for now, i’m earning my keep. for now, i have him.

What Being Little Feels Like

People think being alone makes you lonely, but I don’t think that’s true. Being surrounded by the wrong people is the loneliest thing in the world. 

-Kim Culbertson

Tomorrow, I'm going to listen to Van Morrison's "Sweet Thing" on repeat and focus on not being too hard on myself. Tomorrow, I will focus all my energy on being ok. But tonight, we wallow.  Tonight, we feel lonely and sad.

Pure Magic

I never felt poor growing up. I never felt that constant, overwhelming feeling of drowning in my predetermined existence. Coming from a single-parent family, that would seem like a feat. But my mother - like all mothers made up of pure magic - made sure my brother, sister, and I never went without our basic needs. Not just that, our (nearly) every want. She never made us feel like there was something we couldn't have. Like things were out of our grasp because money had been tight. Because money would forever be tight, now that our father was out of the picture. She was effortless. A portrait of poise and strength. But, truth be told, our father always seemed like he was more of a problem than a solution to financial woes. Any woes, truthfully. To this day, he's stumbled and fallen along the way to "stability". He's been unable to keep steady employment or a steady household. But none of that registered while I was little. My mother protected us from him. Maybe because she knew that he didn't know how. He would never really know how to.

She raised us to be strong, decent human beings. To pass out kindness like it was our only form of currency. To be forgiving and understanding in all things. To strive to be better than your circumstances. To never let things like money or fear or worry or situation keep us from doing things that mattered the most to us. She taught us to love and never hate. To always see the positives in our life. She's the one who taught me to put others before myself (something I really struggled with in my teenage years, and probably a little even now). And to help out others when they need help, even (especially) when they're too scared to ask.

 I look at her in awe. I look at her and think, 'how can such a small creature like her love so big? How can love like that cost nothing to her?' I feel like I'm nothing like her most of the time. She's a saint and I'm wrong in so many ways. But that never mattered to her. I know it never will matter to he. My pride and stubbornness cloud my vision. But I never stop trying to be like her. Being a grown up is hard, and I never realized that growing up. Maybe because she always made is look so easy. She made it seem like it was nothing. She never showed traces of loneliness or sadness or weariness even though I know she felt all of those things and more. Because everyone does. Because you can't not feel like the world is going to crush you at times, when you're raising three kids alone. And sometimes, I forget that she feels things. Supermom feels feelings, guys!

 Part of being older is seeing things that you never noticed before. And now I can see. I can see it in the way she sighs. I can see it in the distant look she gets when things are quiet. In how she shakes and constantly checks her phone when she hears my brother is having a rough go of things. I can see it in the way she cracks her neck when she's really, really stressed about something. In how you can tell, you can just tell, she's silently praying, fiercely hoping, that none of us will ever have to go through what she did. That's when I know. That's when I know being Supermom isn't easy. It's hard and there's no one there to pat you on the back and encourage you when things seem impossible. Nothing in her world was effortless or simple. But she always tried. And she never once failed us. She never failed me. She gathered her composure and put on a happy face for us. She constantly battled the will to give up and fall apart, like everyone expected her to do and she did it for us. To protect us from a life she was forced into living. Because my father let her down. Because my father let us all down. And now, countless years later, she doesn't hold anything against him (even though no one would exactly blame her if she did). Because my mom, my mom that's made up of pure magic, is a saint. She's everything I want to be when I grow up.

Things to come...

Thinking about the future is scary. I will elaborate on this soon.

Overthrow it. Paralyze it. Destroy it.

Things have been good. I am good. Apart from the fuzziness and chaos that is life, I am good in it all.

I’ve been having a lot of nightmares, lately. Legitimate ones. Tragic events that are very likely to happen, or the possibility of them happening is there. I don’t know what to do with them. I hate them because they scare me. I wake up at 2… 3… 4… 5… with all of these terrible things happening all at once and I sit in my bed trying to regroup and decipher what is real and what isn’t. It’s exhausting, quite honestly. Sleep is exhausting. I hate dreaming for this exact reason. It takes me out of reality and places me between vivid scenarios that aren’t far-fetched enough to doubt. They’re life-like to the point of turning into actual memories in my mind. Memories that never actually happened to me, but have wedged their way in between car rides with my Tata and songs from my childhood. They’re in between all of the ruckus and quiet moments. Transforming themselves into something too real to ignore. I don’t want that to happen with these nightmares. I don’t want to be afraid of people because of things they’ve done to me in my dreams. My grasp on reality is being smothered to death by the fury of my imagination.

Amidst all of this, I see a break on my horizon. I see it because it is something I’ve already decided to do. I like to retain some anonymity in all this. I remain as vague as humanly possible for me because too much information is not my thing. Alluding to events is my thing. I scarcely speak of any of these things with people because an open forum is easier to share with. There is no judgment here. No questions. It just is. I have always liked that because it’s the only way to communicate what is going on inside my head. My thoughts are so fleeting and numbered that I can never get them out in a way that’ll make sense to others. I feel as though someone needs to go in there and rinse me down. Take it all away. Lobotomize me. Break.

Loneliness Postponed

It’s hard for me to separate what I want and the reality of the world.

It can’t be that way. It’s simply a delusion. A delusion I’ve chosen to indulge in for the past few months. I don’t know why I become so involved in the things I cannot ever have. The people who cannot love me back. I see that now. Though, I fear it’s a little too late. I thought I could imagine how much this would hurt. I thought I understood it all. But I was wrong and naïve to its possible extent. And all I feel is pain. Pain from what could have been, had circumstances been different. Had distance not been an issue. It’s a difficult pang of longing because it was never something I had in the first place. Instead, I’m left with the “what if?” of it all. The question I am doomed to contemplate forever. Perhaps time with lessen its weigh on my heart. Maybe I’ll be able to move on and look elsewhere for my needs. But part of me doesn’t want to. Part of me is afraid to let go. Let go of what, though? I never had him. Not really. I had the idea of him. The possibility of it all. The desire to be nearer to him than any other.

I got carried away. Despite incessantly reminding myself not to. I knew it’d turn out this way. In the back of my mind, I knew it all along. I just wasn’t prepared for it all. I never am.

Since my earliest childhood a barb of sorrow has lodged in my heart. As long as it stays I am ironic -- if it is pulled out I shall die.