Different Strokes

Okay, a serious blog...

There's something wrong with me, or so my friends tell me. I just can't stand the idea of not having someone special in my life to call my own. They tell me I am not comfortable with myself. They tell me that in order to love someone else that I have to love myself. They tell me that I'm looking for a man to fix what is wrong with my life. They tell me these things and it hurts. Not because it's true and truth hurts, but because they don't know what goes on in my head.

Ever since I was young, I was always alone. My parents worked 10 hours a day, 7 days a week and I was always stuck at home in an empty house. But being alone was preferrable to when they came home because that's when all hell broke loose. I grew up in a very abusive environment. My father was physically and mentally abusive, but I'm pretty sure my mom helped with at least some emotional scarring - although to credit her, she did protect me from the physical beatdowns from my dad when she was able to stop it. All in all, I didn't receive a lot of love growing up, and the two people I should have trusted most with my life, I trusted hardly at all.

Since I wasn't receiving the emotional nourishment I needed from my parents, I started to confide in my friends, and in that sense, my friends became my surrogate family. They acted as the catalyst for my emotional support system and served as an outlet for all the love I had to give. But eventually, even that would give way to that fateful day on the first day of my senior year of high school when all of that suddenly changed.

I started to not be able to share all that was going on in my life. My friends simply couldn't relate (and for good reason) I started to feel ostracized - different, and I felt like no one could possibly understand me. And so I hid from that uncomfortable feeling, and pretended nothing was wrong, even to the point that I was lying everyday to the people who I seemed closest to.

The only people I could really be myself with were my boyfriends. No matter what, I always felt like I could let my hair down and be real and connect with them. That's why sometimes, I pick bad men. It's not that I don't know they are not ideal for me. It's just that I can find real solace in our connection when we're together - even if sometimes, it is purely sexual. The safety, security, and warmth I feel when I'm with someone I can be emotionally open with is absolutely priceless to me. It seems to be my only outlet of that caliber besides blogging - and even here, I feel as if I'm always acting.

So, I guess that is why I can't be alone. That is why I am always looking for someone to be in my life and take that role as my confidante, my best friend. That is why I find it so hard to let go of those people who have assumed that role in my life, even if their presence in my life is somewhat fatalistic to my endeavors. Because those select few are the only ones I have trusted with my emotions, my safety, my heart, and my well-being. And when one of them has fallen short, I try not to lose hope of his rehabilitation or of finding someone else to fill his shoes, because losing hope would mean alienating myself from the world and slowly, ever so slowly, falling deeper and deeper into a depression I might not have the ability to get out of by myself.

So you see, what they say about me is wrong. They see how I act and make their judgments on how they see reason and logic, but I'm just playing with a whole new deck of cards. Maybe no one will ever understand me - not at the core. But I can always hope. And even though, with my talents, intelligence, success, and perseverance, I can stand quite well on my own two feet, doing so without a companion to share in those things makes life shallow and pointless. Without someone you can really "come home to", life is just a 24/7 grind of superficiality, money, and sex - I'm determined to rise above it.