heterotaxia

"You love, love, love
when you know I can’t love
you love, love, love
when you know I can’t love you
so I think it’s best we both forget
before we dwell on it…"
-Of Monsters and Men, Love Love Love

If someone says they love you but they don’t show it, does it really count?

It’s like living in poverty with a million dollar bank account no one told you about.  You’re rich but you’re not rich.  You’re blessed but you’re not blessed.  You’re loved but you’re not loved.  

I don’t want to say not being in a relationship has been detrimental to my self-worth but I don’t think it’s helped.  I just keep thinking how I’m 27 and have never connected with anyone on a deep, meaningful level.  And the one time I thought I did, well, it disintegrated and completely changed the way I saw people.  If that strong of a friendship could crumble, there was no hope for me and anyone else.

But stuff happens.  People form relationships and those relationships sometimes end due to any number of circumstances.  And sometimes you’re left wallowing in your own cesspool of self-doubt because no one else comes along to help you correct your interpersonal errors.  Sometimes locations and circumstances make it hard to hone in on a partner.  Or even a friend.

There must be some benefit to being told your loved by someone outside your bloodline.  They can be with anyone but they choose to be with you.  They open their hearts to the possibility of pain and see through the marks on your skin and the mistakes in your mind.  Someone out there came to you and decided to stay because you were worth getting to know.  For me, people have come into my life but it’s the staying part that seems so difficult.  Do I subconsciously drive people away?  Do they just get tired of my incessant self-deprecation?  Or do they get bored with my personality?

I often feel like a novelty act, a brand new Brannon still in the cellophane and once the protective casing has been cut away and I’ve been squeezed of jokes and encouragement and conversation, I am discarded.  The newness wears away as the imperfections poke through the shellacked surface that’s eventually worn away through long exchanges and lots of laughs and eventual awkward pauses.  Then missed e-mails.  Unanswered text messages.  Phone calls not returned.  There’s something about me that hooks people in but once they’ve penetrated whatever "thing" magnetizes them to me, they realize I am too flawed, too flat, too frail to stick with and they eventually pull out.

I’m not trying to make myself look like a victim.  I know you think I am.  But I’m not.  And I am not blaming anyone who has gone away.  I wouldn’t want to put up with someone like myself either!  The novelty becomes a nuisance after a while.  And everyone says they aren’t like everyone else.  They’ll stick around.  They never do.  Some stay longer than others, but for me, it’s just a waiting game.  Classmates never called when class was over.  Co-workers never kept in contact when they found better jobs.  Old roommates haven’t written.  It hurts.  It hurts so bad.  But I’m not bitter about it and I don’t blame them.  I just take it for what it is: another form of rejection, just a slow kind, a knife plunged inside by inches. 

Is love a skill like drawing or writing?  If you don’t use it, you lose it?  If so, I’ve definitely lost it.  And once it’s been lost, how can you regain it?  Or in my case, how do you get it to begin with?  I almost feel as if I’m incapable of loving someone simply because I haven’t before.  I’ve gone single so long that at this point in my life, love would feel foreign and uncomfortable.  Could I handle romantic feelings for another?  I can barely handle my feelings in general, so imagining a heightened heart makes me feel light-headed.

I suppose any new experience can be queasy but sometimes queasy can be good when someone’s there to still your stomach. 

But I can’t find a Pepto-partner because of the aforementioned lack of longevity in my relationships.  How can I trust someone when they’re going to get up and go away one day?  That’s the risk you take.  Anyone can leave you at any time but you can’t be closed off to everyone.  I know that.  But it’s hard to put into practice when you’re working with a tumultuous ticker.  

The only two constant companions I’ve ever had in my life are hunger and loneliness and both have been with me so long I almost don’t know how to be myself without them.  The Brannon you know has been built around an empty heart and stomach.    

I went walking with a high school classmate a few weeks ago and during our conversation, I pointed out that being lonely is something so ingrained in me now that it almost feels natural at this point. Yet, I still crave conversation with people. It’s probably why I ignored all red flags and tried to give friendship with single black male a go. Look how well that worked out. Look how well the writer girl worked out.

I’m confused. Obviously, these past few examples of attempts at relationships aren’t all there is out there. The last two encounters I’ve had doesn’t mean I should give up. But it feels like it would be easier if I did. Relationships are such hard work and I don’t have the energy. I barely have the energy to get out of bed every day, much less mold a love affair or forge a friendship.  I’d rather pass out at this point.

Insecurity is at the heart of all my troubles when it comes to other people.  If I was more confident and knew who I was as a person and what I wanted out of myself and life and other people, I wouldn’t be so bothered with separation and rejection.  People pull apart.  It happens to everyone and I shouldn’t take it so personally when it happens to me.  But the flawed way I see it is every lost friend is a reminder of my inability to maintain friendships, my own dislike for myself, and my loneliness, even if the lost friendship isn’t necessarily my fault.

It goes back to not feeling special.  I never felt special as a kid.  My parents didn’t nurture my talents or make me feel like someone who could make a difference.  My mom fed me cake and nagged about all the things I didn’t do right and my dad chugged beer in our storage shed and never looked my way and my sister still resents me for being born and taking the shine away from her for a few years.

I went through middle school and high school being fat with a severe case of acne and dandruff and no girl looked at me with interest.  I saw people forming friendships and finding out about romance and sex and all I could think about was how the next pizza I ate would kill the pain inside.  When you see so many of your peers connecting on deep levels with othersand you realize you’re not, it does something to you.  Even if you’re just going through an awkward phase or haven’t connected due to a lack of commonalities, even if it’s not your fault, it still does something to you.  It still crushes your confidence and sends you into a downward spiral of isolation.

I withdrew and went inward when other kids were blossoming socially.  I’ve never truly recovered from those crucial years, despite discovering fat free potato chips and pyrithione zinc.  Sometimes high school hurt runs the deepest and stays the longest.  It certainly hasn’t left me yet.

No one came around and pulled me out of the teenage funk.  No one held my hand or kissed me at night.  I never shared a long car ride with a girl as we listened to a mixed CD made just for us.  I never had small talk while cuddling.  I never cuddled.  No one picked me.  I never had any awakenings.  And it trained me to think I wasn’t worthy of being picked, of being special, of being someone’s number one.

And it’s not just the fact that I never had anyone I could call my own.  I had to sit and listen as classmates came to me and told me about their love lives and crushes and trying to choose between two (or sometimes three or sometimes more) potential paramours.  There seemed to be such an abundance of opportunity for them and while I was happy to listen and help them navigate their hearts, it also reminded me my own heart was a dead end.

Even when I survived the stigma of cystic acne and lost a lot of weight, I still felt fat and ugly and alone.  Even now, I still pick at my face and pick on myself.

When I was in college, almost literally had the whole world at my fingertips.  Students from around the globe went there to study and I could no longer use the excuse of incompatibility with small town girls back home.  I even tried dating a girl who seemed compatible and things went well for a couple of weeks until I felt she disrespected me by talking to another guy and ignoring me.  I cut her off with a staggering quickness and completeness.

Looking back on it, I probably overreacted.  I blew it with her and was left messed up by the experience and never tried it again.  The insecurity still held me back.  The layers of lassitude kept me from reaching out to others and so I kept to myself and made next to no friends and squandered all opportunities for genuine relationships and instead ate to cope.

To reiterate, I don’t hold (most) of the blame with others.  People have tried to reach out to me.  And girls have had crushes on me in the past.  And I have made friends.  But all my relationships have dissolved or are in the process of dissolving.  And there’s something that keeps me from enjoying these relationships while they last.  It’s knowing the inevitability of the end.  It’s the casual condition of the friendship.  It’s the insecurity that creeps in and shuts others out because I don’t feel worth anyone’s time.  It’s my lack of contribution to society and people as a whole.  It’s the self-sabotage, the self-deprecation, the self-esteem set to zero.

I’ve gotten so disjointed that even when people are nice to me, it feels as if they are doing me a favor. It’s not that it doesn’t feel genuine but it feels forced, like they are complimenting me to make me feel better, not because they just want me to know how good I am.  It often feels a lot like charity.  I don’t trust others to be genuine because I think so low of myself.  And I don’t want anyone to do me any favors.  I want someone to be by my side because they want to be, not because they feel they owe me something or have something to prove.

I’ve had friends and crushes and people who have shown interest in me as something, whether it be romantic or platonic, but I don’t know if any of these people have ever loved me.  If they have, they haven’t shown me or even told me.

What is love?  How do you show love to those around you?  You start by telling the person you love them.  And then you express it in other ways.  You demonstrate that love.  My mom loved me by making me fat.  My dad loved me by submitting a paycheck to my mom every week.  My sister loved me by…hmm.  I suppose I shouldn’t blame my parents for showing love in their own way, even if it impeded my social skills and negatively influenced future relationships with others.  They did the best they could and there comes a time when I have to sit back and take personal responsibility and accountability for how I handle others.

But it’s hard.  The unhealthy love communication has conditioned me to hate myself.  It’s a struggle to untangle all the years of emotional turpitude.  And it would be difficult enough with support and long-term friendships to help me hinder my self-hatred but when I’m continuously presented with people who come and go (sometimes people I pursue myself, sometimes people who fall into my lap), it makes things all the more insurmountable.  And it exhausts me.

And there are days when I don’t want to try because I feel too fundamentally screwed up.  No one wants someone as internally damaged as me, someone who trusts no one, someone who sits and gives up and waits to be left behind.  The only satisfaction I get now is proving these people right when they say they will be the one to stay when all the others have gone and then they do leave.  In fact, the ones who say such things are the one who leave the quickest.

At this point in my life, I believe I am incapable of love, of loving and being loved.  I can’t handle it because it’s been so foreign for so long.  My heart has been wilted from misuse and neglect.  Discovering love now would be like discovering an extra leg or seeing the world in shades of blue.  Love doesn’t even feel right anymore.  I can’t even get excited about a friendship without the flood of self-doubt coming in and pushing out that excitement.  It only turns torturous.

People can try to come in, to throw knives in order to pierce my heart but they’ll miss their mark.  It’s operating from a different place now.  I’m all mixed up inside.  Maybe I always has been.  Maybe that’s been the trouble all along. 

When it comes to love, there’s knowing and then there’s showing and if you’re not showing it, is the other person really knowing it at all?  There’s a difference between being told you’re loved, knowing it, and then actually feeling it.  Maybe I’ve been loved but I’ve never felt it and so I’ve never been loved.  I’ve never been rich or blessed.  I’ve been given everything.  I have nothing.