Economy of Love

(not my picture but a game of chess works well with the subject matter. Also I love the video game Don't Starve.) 

People don't teach kids societal things, real things. Adults, not just teachers. It's like some sort of creed, this is the way, we had to learn the hard way now it's their turn and that's fine and true. In most cases.

But things like love, sharing, letting go and moving on, succeeding at something and not being pulled into a funk because you may never be so successful again or failing at something and be able to pull yourself up by your bootstraps. To not fall into depression, letting your body, mind, spirit, and creativity wither away and die. We're not taught how to deal with the demons in our heads. We're not taught how to survive each day with our own thoughts, but we learn.
We learn by staying awake till 3 am then having school the next morning and feeling like garbage. Or by the reason we were staying up, listening to our parents screaming at each other, not caring who they wake up not realizing you're at the door of your bedroom listening to every blood soaked venom injected word they spew at each other. In the light of day everything's fine, they love each other. At night, they hate that they love each other. Things get thrown, walls get holes in them, things break, hearts break. And you think to yourself alright, no need to worry, just another night. They'll get through it. But sometimes they don't.

In a household where your dad moved out, went to prison or passed away, or in a house where a mom did the same, it's even harder. The parent has to wade through a debris of 16 hours of work a day between two jobs. Rent, bills, childcare, food. Things you don't even think about till at least 14 and if you have a sibling things get even more complicated. You start to feel alone, why cant my parent hang out with me today? I want to feel loved. And they do love you, it's just so emotionally distanced you start to feel the need to earn, to buy your parents affection. If not, who else will give it to you. Not these other people your parent is bringing into the house, that's not romance. That's paying the bills.

Since I was young I knew, I learned that love could be given and taken away like currency. Like a gift card with an expiration date that's been scratched off. A punishment to be tortured with if you don't love them back or if you do love them, they're never there at all. Why not put up walls to protect yourself from even trying? If I'm no good at romance, hate myself and have the personality I do, why not just run away? I'd like to believe that affection should be shared, as a friendly thing. But affection borders intimacy. Intimacy doesn't have to be romantic but it often is. And I don't need romance.

I just want to feel close to someone. That doesn't mean the sexual acts, that means someone I can slowly destroy my tall, well built and heavily defended walls with. But when your only dating experiences hurt you: the first one being manipulative, using your own deluded ideologies of love against you forcing you to do things with him you weren't ready for then cheating and breaking up for the other person, and the second relationship killed herself, it really only leaves you with one conclusion. One ice cold, heart steeling fact that you realize you knew all along. Either you don't know how to love correctly, and you're in the wrong, or the world just isn't worth it. You're not worth it.

If everything I care about doesn't matter, if it can and has all been taken away, what's the point? What am I still doing here? This dark spiraling path of thoughts haunts me every day, taunting me, because it feels like I'm the only person who knows this fact even though I KNOW I'm not the only one who knows the feeling. And because other people get the same feeling, I have to have hope.

I had a chance at happiness, with someone I no longer talk to. I wish I could say I was sorry, for being a coward, for running away, because I knew his feelings for me, and I couldn't handle it. But I hadn't realized he knew the lesson. He knew how to move on. And now he's with someone else, and I'm still here alone. But I have hope that perhaps some day I'll be able to shed this painful, armored skin, one day I might step out and feel the sun without getting burned. One day I might have someone's lips against my own in front of a crowd of people right after our "I do's". It's sad and scary to think that might never happen to me, but what's truly scary is the hope it will. Because then, I'll have bought someone with all my love currency, and I won't have to share. 

(To a special person in my life, you know you'll always have a place in my heart. I know I'm not alone, it just really feels like it sometimes. Yay depression. )

(And to everyone else, thank you for reading, I hope you enjoyed, or at least can understand some of these feelings. I may post more in the future, whenever some no good 4 AM demon thoughts appear.)