Originally written on Feb 18, 2022
I’ve spent a lot of my adult life trying to make sense of what’s happening in my brain. Not sure how to feel what I feel. For the longest time I only had a couple of modes. Happy, depressed and angry but angry in a “I’m a pure ball of rage on the inside but I’m just going to shut down and be quiet and say everything is fine while I want to rip your head off” kind of way. The sneaky part was that there were a ton of other emotions and feelings inside of me but they always came out in one of those three ways. It was like they got funneled down the emotional Plinko board in my mind and ended up where ever they should land. I didn’t know how to express my emotions so I was at the mercy of my emotional Plinko (If you don’t know Plinko it was a game on the ever popular mid-day, watch when your sick at home or at your grandparent’s house gameshow. You got these big plastic chips and had to slide them down an open slot at the top of the board and watch as your chip bounced around the board hitting pegs and redirecting on it’s descent to potentially win money). I don’t think I actually knew what it meant to be happy because it was clouded by judgement, shame, anger and self deprecation. I didn’t know how to get out of that messy place because I didn’t know there was another option.
For the longest time I thought love and kindness were the same as making myself as small and as easy going as possible. I’d laugh at things I didn’t find funny, I’d give my time to people who didn’t give theirs in return. I’d go above and beyond to make people who hurt me comfortable because if they could just see how easy going and needless I was they’d fall madly in love with me and I wouldn’t feel so alone anymore. If I could just make them depend on me, make them need me then I couldn’t be thrown away. I mean who’s going to get rid of the emotional cheerleader who will solve all your problems, make you dinner, remember your birthday and favourite type of cake all for nothing but a crumb of attention!?
I helped this one guy who I had a major crush on, after he had already clobbered my heart mind you, with a psych exam by sharing my meticulously organized, colour coded notes and textbook. He had it for over a week and didn’t answer my texts when I asked for him to return them so I could also study for an upcoming exam. But I’m easy going and If I show him that I can be his girlfriend. I had to go to his house (p.s it wasn’t some long trek, it was literally a 2 minute walk) and pick them up. A couple of years later when he applied for a job I was leaving I went out of my way to see if he wanted any help or advice when applying for the position. Why? Why was I spending my spare time helping someone who started flirting with me while still with his ex? Who then got back with his ex while sleeping with me? Why was I still chasing the approval of this grown man-child who had a Dominoes Pizza box full of chicken wing bones in his closet the first time we had sex? I cringe to think back on it now! Yes we were both in university but I was 19 and he was in his late 20s. That said this is just my side of the story. I can laugh about it now but the deep ache and heartbreak was very real for a long time.
The worst part was I thought that’s all I deserved. I thought it was my only chance to be with someone. I didn’t date at all in high school. I would never have imagined telling any of my crushes that I actually liked them because what if they didn’t return the sentiment? I thought that this tiny glimmer of someone actually liking me was it. I tried to make myself useful and invaluable to him so that he would see how cool and nice and fun it would be for us to be together. I drank too much so I could blame my actions on alcohol if they didn’t make me cool. It was the first time I was so close to having a boyfriend that I couldn’t deal with the possibility of it not working out. So many grown ups in my life had offered unsolicited advice saying; “You’re the kind of person who will find someone in university.” as if being single at 17 was a medical diagnoses and my prescription was to go to university. I wish the advice I’d received was more along the lines of “Figure out who you are and what you really want first. And don’t go for dudes who have chicken bone wings in a box in their closet”. But that’s not what they said so I didn’t have much to go off of.
In that time of my life I couldn’t see the future. I could only see that moment. I didn’t realize that my life would go on and there would be other opportunities. I had put so many expectations on myself and carried around the expectations of the people around me. I didn’t realize how small I had made myself. How I quieted my instincts for a chance to be something I thought I wanted. I was putting up with things that I wouldn’t dream of now. That’s growth I guess. That’s trying to date in your late teens, feeling like your a grownup, at a very small university in a very small town. There were only 1400 students in the whole school in my first year. I was spending all my energy chasing and shapeshifting for people who didn’t even know me. I didn’t know me.
Looking back (over a decade and a lot of therapy later) I am so thankful that’s not who I became. Not who I stayed. I had to go through it to get through it. I had spent all this time with such a limited range of emotions but once I started to sort them out and really feel (well I’m still working on feeling them because I got good at labeling them but not so much the actually feeling them part) I became more myself. I don’t want to live through that heartbreak again. It fucking sucked. Not only the romantic heartbreak but the self heartbreak. In retrospect I’m glad it happened though. That those things didn’t work out. It lead me to where I am and I’m thankful for that. I still dream about the people who broke my heart sometimes. They show up out of nowhere after years of not following them on social media or living in the same town. In my dreams I see the cringe and the red flags. Of course it’s easier when you’re not inside of it. I’m not in that place anymore. I’m not that person anymore. I’m thankful for that.
