Blame Your Parents

You were brought into this world by accident. They tried to use doctors to make it so you didn’t happen. But something didn’t work. They called you the miracle baby because, despite everyone trying to drown you, you kept swimming. So they had no choice but to keep you.

Then they used you. First, her. To feel needed. To feel loved. To feel like she was number one in someone’s life—a cancer that you will inherit, and one that will haunt you throughout your life. Every time she scooped you up, held you, rubbed your head, said I love you I love you I love you, you’d say I love you back, and she’d say I love you more. And back then you thought wow. I’m loved, I am love.

But then you upset her by growing up, by hugging her more infrequently, by needing her just a little less. You let her down, you stopped fueling the parts of her that were so hungry for compassion, her own little girl that wasn’t fed properly and grew up emaciated and parched and desperate for someone to fill the empty spaces left behind by those who were never there in the first place. And it wasn’t fair to her, but it wasn’t fair to you either.

You tried, though. You really did. You tried to be everything for one person until it’s what you wanted to be yourself. And anything less made you anxious, it made you feel like you were nothing. That, because one person stopped thinking about you for a brief moment in time, the whole world would forget you.

But somewhere along the way, you realized something, and this is where he comes in. He hurt her, he hurt you; he hurt the others, the ones like you who are a big part of the story but can’t fit here because it’s about him and her and him and her consume all the space, all the air around them until everyone else suffocates.

While love is pain, pain is not love.

She didn’t know this though because she, like you, was made to believe that nothing should feel right. So she praised him, lifted him up, put him on a pedestal next to God and served him. Washed his clothes, made his meals. Picked him up off the highway like half dead roadkill, mid-OD, and took him back home for you to play with.

But at least he came back with toys. Little bottles for your dolls, needles to give them their shots. He hid them around the house like Easter eggs—in you closet, inside your favorite sneakers. Sometimes he’d make it easy and leave them on the carpet in the living room.

He had some good moments. Cleaned up, took you to a water park. Even started going to church and bought a car, a house. Made you feel safe again, like everything would be okay. You felt bad for your friends, even, because their him and her were sometimes just him or her, or sometimes neither.

Those were your favorite years. But when he started again, then left for good, she stayed but she also left too. He created an empty space she needed filled straight away, but she wasn’t sure how to fill it so she tried different things, like the stuff that was in those little bottles he brought, and then someone who looked like him. They both helped her, but then you remembered that love from before. And what had happened after all this time, without you really noticing, was that you stopped being sustenance. You didn’t know how to be anything else; at this point it was your entire identity. And who were you if not hers?

But there was nothing you could do about it. You were rendered powerless by someone who once gave you power. She kept leaving you alone, until finally you decided to see what it was all about. And you got some bottles and drank them yourself and realized that they’re pretty okay. They made you feel like, even though all your problems were still there, they didn’t matter so much. It healed you, over and over, and every time it touched your lips you were happy again.

Knowing her secret made you feel closer to her, so you wanted to go deeper. To idolize, to obsess, the way she did over him and him and probably him before that too. Over time, you had many. You kept tabs on them from afar, online, peering through their phones and social media like a private detective, like a dangerous stalker. Looking for something, anything, that could validate or destroy you. And even when you were done, when you didn’t love them anymore, when you were ready to toss them aside like an apple core or a couch pillow, you couldn’t because the idea of someone loving you and then not loving you anymore was so overwhelming, so all-encompassing, so stomach turning tear jerking unreasonably soul crushing that you’d rather keep them around than be rejected as a result of your own rejection.

But somehow, they did always end. And then, one didn’t. One stuck around and threatened you. He made you everything you already were, only better. He loved selflessly, honored your desires, cherished what made you happy even if it didn’t do the same for him. But this, it was painful. Because what you need, what you’ve always needed, was obsession. And for you, love and obsession are the same and one without the other is just a transactional partnership. Something is wrong, you thought. Something must be wrong.

But you overturned every stone. You looked through his bag, his closet, all his devices until you found an old her. And you were threatened because you knew how hims were and they could never love you and only you but always needed another one, and another, and if he wasn’t obsessed, if you didn’t consume him, then he would love someone who did, a someone who wasn’t you.

Despite all this however, he kept choosing you. And everyday, you expected him to choose her, or to choose someone new. But it never happened. Yet you were so consumed by the past and the future that you couldn’t see him in the current light, in all the beauty that is him and his heart. You only saw the hurt, all the other hims blurring together while you dwindled away into a shadow of your her, a shadow she told you you’d always become because there’s no escaping it, there’s always an eventually.

So you do the only thing that you can and you try to destroy it. You blame him. You ridicule him. You tell him that he’s not enough, that he’s too much. And still, he chooses you, but you can’t understand why. You can’t understand how anyone could possibly love you after you were discarded. You project all your own insecurities. You ruminate about unfaithfulness because you were once unfaithful, because you had thoughts of betrayal, because you could be a sociopath like them, just like them.

He won’t let it die. And you almost hate him for it because it’s too hard to be with anyone when you’re the way you are. He must want someone else. He must love someone else. You are not enough, you never were, you never will be. If you let him stay and then he goes, it just proves that you are nothing on your own.

You’re not alone, but you’re so incredibly lonely. You’re in a prison. Everything underneath your skin wants to get out. And he deserves more than you, just as you deserved more than them. It’s all a cycle, a brief beginning middle and end, and then it’s all over and your suffering is done and did any of it really matter in the first place?