How to Love Claire Mason

Because I'm Not Worth It

My father bought me a bracelet once. It was made of dozens of rough, tiny white shards of shell strung together on a fraying brown string.

It only cost three dollars.

Yet, I didn't feel deserving of it, not one piece of shell on its string.

I took the bracelet from him, reluctantly, when handed it to me, and frantically looked around for the store he had said he purchased it from. I didn't know the area well, not at all, and it wasn't a mall, just street after street lined with little shops. But all I could think of was returning that bracelet, of getting back the money my father had spent on me that I wasn't worth. And so I broke into a run.

People staggered out of my way with puzzled looks on their faces, probably wondering why the hell this strange girl was running so fast. I faintly heard someone ask if I needed help, if I was okay, but was running much too fast and hard to respond. The answers would have been yes, and no. Yes, I need help finding a store, yes I need mental help. No, I'm not okay because I'm not fucking worth this bracelet and I don't know how to stop feeling this way.

I ran and ran and ran till I could no longer feel my legs. Still no sign of the store. I didn't even have a receipt, anyway. I knew my parents were worrying over my whereabouts, my sanity. I collapsed into a heap against the side of a building. I cried out, gave an exasperated scream, without a care in the world as to who would hear me. I'm not worth it, I began to murmur listlessly. Not worth it, not worth it, not worth it! My murmurings became louder, more frantic, manic even.

I needed the money back. Needed it. I couldn't let my father's money go to waste on me. Not on me. I was nothing, nothing, nothing. I did not deserve his kindness, I did not deserve to be in his loving, generous thoughts that he had had as he browsed the little gift shop. I didn't deserve anything. Especially not love. This bracelet, it was a display of love, of sorts, and I simply could not have it. It was wrong, so wrong. I had to take it back. Had to.

I was crying, very hard, as I thought this. My face burned red and my shirt was quite damp with tears. My head ached from the sobbing, my throat was sore from the screaming. I began to bang my head repeatedly against the wall, muttering "I'm not worth it" over and over again, like a chant, until my voice began to die out and everything; the sun, the clouds, the people, the cement, the little white bracelet still clutched angrily in my fist, everything went black.

The hardest part was realizing I was worth it. Worth the bracelet, worth the money, worth the love, worthy of food, worthy of life. Without that epiphany, I would be nothing.

Still, I needed, still need, reassurance. If I am worthy of love, I need someone to prove it to me. By handing me their heart while taking mine in their own hands and saying "you deserve it. You are worthy. I trust you."

I wrote before that I traded hearts before. Seven times to be exact. I gave all seven partners their hearts back, though reluctantly, in the same condition as I had received them. They gave mine back twisted, broken, water-stained and torn, as if it was a library book they'd used as a plate, a foot rest, and an umbrella in the most harsh of storms.

You weren't worthy of good treatment. You weren't worthy of loving for more than a short time. You weren't worthy of my love at all. You don't deserve me. You don't deserve anyone. You aren't worthy, Claire. You are nothing.

I can't stop from hearing this over and over again everytime it ends and my heart is handed back to me. It's how I feel every time and I can't stop from feeling it. All I can do is shy away from false love; but when I have no one to love me at all I feel all the more worthless. I know it shouldn't be this way.

I know, I know. No boy, no matter how beautiful his eyes, no matter how gentle his hands, no matter how warm his arms and laughter, should ever make me feel that I am less than a person. But they do. Being a person to me is having a place in the world, meaning something to someone, being missed when you are gone because you bring joy to someone and you matter to them.

I didn't want to live anymore. I'm not sure if I even do now. What got me through, what carried me across the broken glass that were the pieces of my former self, what lifted me from the thin, skeletal shell of a person I had become and transformed me into something I thought someone could call beautiful was the thought of all the people I could matter to. Not the person I could be. The person I could be to someone else. What are we if we are of no value to anyone but ourselves? I'm not even that.

I've never known what it is like to mean something to someone. Really mean something. I've thought I've meant the world to those who later cast me aside in an instant, without a second thought, without feeling regret, without feeling at all. They are so quick to tell me how much I mean to them, and even quicker to make me feel that I never meant anything to them at all. As if I was only a girl they passed on the street, smiled at once, and never saw or thought of again because there was nothing remarkable, nothing extraordinarily beautiful about her.

I am an ugly white balloon they tired of holding onto and let go of. I drift up and up and up each time, into the lonely sky, with only my damaging thoughts that seize my conscious to comfort me. And the pressure of those thoughts that they have instilled in me, like extra, unnecessary air they blew into me only to set me free moments later, that pressure becomes too much and I start to fall, slowly at first, then faster.

They haven't set me free. They have let me go only to be caged by the feeling that I am nothing.

I wasn't worthy of food. I wasn't worthy of that $3 bracelet or the love my father showed in buying it for me.

How the hell did I think I would be worthy of their love?

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