Dog Days of Summer
It’s too hot to pretend I am fine. I am not fine. I feel unhappy and unfulfilled. Will I know ‘better’ when it arrives? If this is the best my life has ever been and I am still this unhappy, what can I even do?
Nobody has asked me how I feel since 2021. It had been so long even then that I was surprised and confused and didn’t know how to answer. I thought maybe that person was trustworthy, because he actually asked about my feelings… but it was a means to an end. When I told him my actual feelings, he disappeared.
I have not talked about myself, my true self, to anyone in person since 2019. I do not have any close friends. My last close friend moved on when she started treating her depression and then found a new friend with more common interests. I am glad she feels better.
I tried to form a new close friendship a couple of years ago, but I then got tired of initiating all conversation and being a free therapist. The last time we talked, he hadn’t responded to me in a week or so, then came asking for advice about getting rejected. When I said I would give him advice but it was shitty that he only talks to me when he needs something, he got angry and tried to blame it on me… how does that work? I am someone to talk at but not with?
After that, I stopped trying, because what is the point? It’s far less stressful to just go through life not asking and not giving. Because I give too much and do not know how to ask. There are no people to ask. Even if there were, I would not remember to ask.
This extreme independence is borne of trauma. I don’t know that I am able to trust the right people, because I don’t seem to meet the right people. I am not made for this society, and it hurts me when I try to make it make sense. There is no solution.
One of my sisters told me she thinks I could “find love again.” But did I ever find it in the first place? The one “love” I have had was full of pain and loss and I legitimately could not ask him to be with me because I thought he wanted to be with someone else. And I sacrificed my hopes because I thought that was what I was supposed to do so he would be happy.
If I am brutally honest, I have not felt safe with anyone since then. Every relationship I have been in was unsafe for me. Nobody has ever held space for me. I am safe for everyone else, but they are not my refuge. I do not know how a refuge looks. I only find gaping chasms of need veiled just enough that I am shocked when I take a wrong step and find myself trapped, falling into the dynamic of nurturer to someone who resents me for having my own wants, needs, and plans.
It’s repulsive to me. I do not want to experience that again. It is clear I still carry a lot of pain, and it is also clear that it isn’t going anywhere. Nothing helps. Nobody helps.
Are there people capable of care? I don’t know, and I am too weary and wary to search.
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