The Lies We Live

riveting

This is not the same kind of loneliness. The one I felt when I actually had no one and nothing to live for. Because I do have those things, but it's the loneliness you feel sitting with a group of old friends, or avoiding your peers after class has finished. 

You know you should be participating, making a name for yourself on this God-awful planet, however, you feel the need to retract yourself because you feel awkward and insatiable every time you make human interaction. 

The way I'm happy when I go out with my friends, right up until the moment that the laughter stops and the conversation settles back into its usual hum, as I fall back into the abyss of feeling like a stranger in my own skin.

I don't recognize myself anymore. Not just when I look in the mirror, but especially when I look past it. What happened to the warrior that used to live within you?

Where did she go? I want to know because I miss her. She a soldier with a trigger smile and a rifle for a mouth. She knows something about aim. There is precision in everything and the path filled with landmines is no challenge for her.

But I am a little girl who wears cute skirts and nice dresses. I am the toy maker's prodigy. A puppet master's muse. I am no longer able to control myself anymore. 

You say it's better if we meet a few times, and you're right. But my heart thinks you're just talking to us to pass time when you say that. I'm too emotional and too confused to tell you how I really  feel, because I can't sift through the raging hormones and the constant need for this empty space of a person to be filled. 

It has come to the point where I my thoughts go back to the very first boy that took interest in me. The one that became possessive and clingy and asked me out over the phone. In the darkest moments, I know I wish I let that happen. 

Because being unwanted is a feeling I can not overcome. I want to be loved and appreciated, because a stupid part of me feels that this is how validation works. Men want you and therefore you are needed in this world. 

But we also need doctors and architects. Teachers and artists. I could have given back to the world if only I chose a path of meaning, but I chose this: a safe choice and a cruel world. I'm in business because I never took that leap of faith to go and do the things I wanted to do. Become a writer. Learn about space and become an astrophysicist. 

People think that striving artists, and jobless graduates are the biggest losers, but I think they're wrong. I think I'm the biggest loser because I didn't jump when I felt like flying. And now, I will never fly because I was too scared of the fall. I sit here on the cliff thinking about all the places I could have gone. 

My friends think I'm pathetic for feeling so deeply for this guy, or still thinking about the last one, and I don't know how to tell them I'm sorry for being such an inconvenience. I wish I could be strong enough for apathy, but life is cruel; is it so wrong for me to want someone to lean on, someone to give all the love I have never given myself, someone to make me feel like I am worth the things I take from this world.

And I know what you say to this: you don't  need a man to complete you. But I need a partner face the universe with. I need a confidant that can lift me the way I lift them. 

The truth is, I don't know what my future looks like, and therefore I don't know if you'll still be here by the end of this year. I don't know when you'll come to see me and I don't know if I'll ever be ready for that. I don't know if you'll love me, because I am a very hard person to love. I cry about everything and I'm the biggest loser you'll ever meet.

But I hope you like me, God I hope you like me.