Month.
Okay, year.
Yesterday I sat in my counselor's office in tears, my house of cards fallen around me.
"It just hurts so bad and I don't know what to do with the pain. I want to run from it, anything but feel it. But I can't."
I saw in everyone's eyes a kindness for my struggle.
"Some of this is just being human, asplenia," my counselor said, warmly.
I thought about the conversation in the shower this morning.
What if the worst case scenario was true? What if I was more into him than he was to me? Why does that hurt so bad? Because I wonder what shitty qualities of mine drove him away. Or made me unworthy. (I can't even write that without tearing up but bear with me because this doesn't just descend into self-pity, it does get better.)
What hurts is that rejection feels like proof of my worst qualities. Like I am nothing but a big giant bag of suck.
The biggest proof of all? That I didn't listen to my gut.
My brain is full of self-berating missives. "How could you be such an idiot! The signs were there. Not only do you SUCK but you suck so bad that you ignored the suck and now you DESERVE the suck. Go lie in your bed of suck and SUCK. That is all."
Wow. That's some judgmental shit. That, my friends, is what we call baggage.
So let's grab an axe and hack away at the pile of suck.
Is it true? Do I suck? Sure, sometimes. ALL the time? No, not always. Not even usually. Sometimes I'm pretty awesome.
Is my flavor of suck enough to have driven him away? Well, maybe, but that doesn't really matter, does it? We can't be awesome to everyone all the time. He's entitled to run screaming in the night away from my pile of suck. It's also likely that the reality is somewhere in between the suck; stuck more in the vagaries of human frailty.
The important thing to realize is how I internalize rejection. Apparently, my suck is a big trigger for me.
So what can I do to feel better?
Let's take the things that I hate about myself. My giant ass, for example.
If you know me and are saying "OMG you are so thin" I will just tell you YOU HAVEN'T SEEN ME NAKED. But look: an attainable goal! Work. The. Fuck. Out. That's MUCH more concrete then "love thyself," right? I can do that.
About the other things, I continue to learn from all these experiences. Friends have been reminding me that I'm loved. I'm still experimenting with drawing. Getting good at something is a great way to escape the suck because look, I haz skillz! Skillz come with practice. One of my best skills is that of appreciation for others. I can love other people pretty well. I'm so much more forgiving of other's frailties than my own. If I keep practicing, maybe I can be a good friend to myself too.
Go me, I am awesome because I keep trying.
