Allow me to rephrase; I'm having bad days. Days when I can't remember what each breath is for, when I can't remember why getting out of bed out of the door out into the world is something people do. Days when I burst into tears spontaneously for no obvious reasons, and days where I'm so numb I keep pinching myself to remember what feeling feels like.
Even now, it is a struggle to get these words out; it seems that my tendency for verbosity has finally got tired of me and took a leave. My one pride and joy, my words, have decided to leave me.
So, in my multiple failures to leave my sanctuary, I began to scroll Tumblr with a passion. Tumblr is my one safe place, where nobody knows me, and I can say whatever I want, like whatever I want, reblog whatever I want without subconsciously fretting about what people would think of me if I did this or that. I could have my petty worries aired out, I could rant with vigour, I could admit that the things I like are sometimes unacceptable. Tumblr was the one place who understands me, and allowed me the space I needed to find who I am. Instead of happy moments of my acquaintances' colourful, inspired, energetic lives, Tumblr was filled with people like myself, and many others with different issues, some also unaccepted by the world. Tumblr became a solace.
But, I digress.
In my apathetic scrolling through Tumblr (because that's usually the state I'm in while on Tumblr), 'love yourself' began to jump out repeatedly at me. This might bring to mind Justin Bieber, but I swear, Bieber doesn't feature on my Tumblr at all. I see him enough on Instagram. But 'love yourself'? 'How can you let others love you if you can't love yourself?' they said. 'You need to love yourself before others can,' they preached. But how does one go about loving oneself?
I've realised that loving myself had become somewhat of an issue with me, some time around the end of 2016. 2017 was an entire year dedicated to myself, giving myself space, letting myself go, allowing myself freedom to express. I wouldn't say I was phenomenally successful at that, but let's just stop at 'improvement'. I'd definitely become much more of a hermit, because oft times I simply am not up for socialising. I found out that I have multiple personalities at different times, switching with no prior warning, with an undetectable pattern to them. I can be the very definition of a social butterfly, and suddenly close up like a clam the next minute, for no obvious reasons. I could put on masks and be the mask when the situation calls for it, the very definition of 'fake it till you make it', but when it all ends, when it's time for the mask to come down, there's a prolonged period of identity confusion--who am I actually? Is the mask I wear my actual identity, or has the mask become me?
There were good times in 2017, but in the freedom I allowed myself, I found parts of myself that I didn't want to face.
I didn't know who I am. I still don't. I would like to say that I've understood myself more compared to when I was 17, but that would be both truth and lies at the same time. For the more I found out about myself, the more I was befuddled by it.
I don't know what I want. I hate people who are passionate sometimes, who have dreams and places they want to be. Who knows their future, who knows who they are, who knows their dreams and destinations, whatever they may be. I watched The Greatest Showman recently, and while 'A Million Dreams' is incredible, it is also a lie for me. For no such passion and dreams exist for me. While I may lie in bed at night, kept awake, it is not by 'the brightest colours' nor is it the 'million dreams' that haunts me. I am kept awake by uncertainty. Doubts. Fear. Anxious thoughts about not being to be clear-minded the next day simply because I'm not able to sleep.
And these things are so minor, I believe everybody has them. So why are they bugging me so much? To the point where I cease to function, and has to rely on masks to keep pushing through. I love long drives, with only me behind the wheel, no one else in the car, with no destination in mind. Because it is only then that I can be unencumbered by the need to find an answer, and the need for masks. I don't have to answer to anybody, and I can keep on lying to myself.
Gah I keep digressing.
Everybody has these issues. But I don't see them being burdened by them. I don't see them blowing it way out of proportion and having it consume their lives. My friends are cheerful, good-hearted people that I can never be. Instead of being petty, short-tempered, insecure, and oft times irresponsible to the point of shutting the world out, my friends are generous, good hearted, cheerful people who welcome the world with open arms. Some of them don't see it, but they are. And they keep going with smiles on their faces.
I understand that nobody airs out their troubles on their faces all the time. I understand that. I know that they must have times of doubt and fear and insecurity, just like I do. I am not special in that sense, no. But where are they drawing strength from? To keep on going like that? I am crumbling more often, requiring more space to myself so that I can let myself go, and keeping a smile on my face is drawing much more strength than I can handle.
GAH. THE POINT OF THIS POST IS NOW SO FAR AWAY THAT I HAVE TO TAKE A SPACESHIP AND SEND IT THROUGH A BLACKHOLE TO RETRIEVE IT.
No. The point of this post is not to whine and cry about my issues. It is about my discovery that I can't find a reason why I'm lovable.
Perhaps that's the reason I keep gravitating back to the few people I know for sure who likes me (even though they'd probably gotten tired of me, and wish I would stop being so clingy). Instead of making new acquaintances and having to worry about impressing them enough to like me.
Because what's there about me to like? Why would anybody like me?
I'm not particularly pretty, no. I'm not tall enough, or slim enough, or even proportioned correctly. I have troubles buying clothes because while everybody's bodies are different, mine is just different enough to give me shopping troubles. I'm not like some of my friends who attracts people the way the sun attracts everything, cheerful, optimistic, all genuine smiles and encouragement and witty retorts. I'm not confident at all in my abilities, or in myself as a person, to be good and encouraging and competent (although I fake it all the time, to the point where sometimes I forget that it's all fake--but that's a good thing no? It is, until some innocent comment tears it all down without warning and you're suddenly awakened to the fact that it is all pretend)
I could go on and on about my stupid insecurities. But that's not why I'm here.
One of the Tumblr posts said, with infinite wisdom, to write down just one thing, every day, one thing that you like about yourself. One thing that you think could be lovable about yourself.
I tried.
I did.
But I couldn't find one thing to love.
Wait, that's not entirely true. I love my ability to spin illusions out of words, and see worlds from words. It is my only solace so far, the ability to escape reality into worlds spun from words. And I love that about myself, but only because it lets me hide. I really don't see why others might like that ability on me, though.
Gaah. I don't know why I'm writing this anyway. So what there's nothing I could find about myself to love? So what if I can't write down a single thing that's lovable about me?
I couldn't even write down reasons to live beyond my family. It seems that life doesn't hold much for me right now. Even fanfiction is slowly losing its appeal. I miss those days when I picked up new interests like monkeys pick up bananas. Nothing can hold my genuine attention for long now. I spend most of my time alternating between trying to find new fanfiction to read, and lying in bed either falling asleep at inopportune moments, or trying to fall asleep when I should be asleep.
If anybody's reading this, even the future me, please enlighten me.
Why am I lovable?
(It sounds like I'm fishing for compliments, doesn't it? It does. Perhaps this entire post should be deleted anyway. I bounced around so many times around so many points that I'll be surprised if any of it made sense.)
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" "I love you" will mean nights staying up watching someone sleep next to you, wondering why they haven't left you already, wondering when they will. It means having to be naken with them with the lights all the way up, stinging every dimpled plane of your body with unforgiving clarity. It means having to take the risk that, as has happened so many times before, you will be disappointed. you will be proven wrong. You will live the reality of that fear you always have, the fear where they wake up one day and look in the mirror and say " What was I doing here? I could do so, so much better than this. "
So you have chosen aloneness. You have chosen the security and the relative freedom of solitude, because there is no risk involved. You can stay up every night and watch your TV shows and eat ice cream out of the box and scroll through your Tumblr and never let your brain sit still, not even for a moment. You can fill your days up with books and coffees and trips to the store where you forget what you wanted the second you walk in the automatic sliding door. You can do so many little, pointless things throughout the day that all you can think of is how badly you want to sleep, how heacy your whole body is, how much your feet hurt. You can wear yourself out again and again on the pavement, and you do, and it feels good."
"Sometimes, you think that no one has ever loved you. You have almost flippantly doubted it, even when someone was saying it to you. Even if they are saying it to you today. Because, though you wouldn't like to admit it, you're not terribly sure you love yourself. You reject all of the simpering notions in beauty magazines and you learn to say nice things about yourself when you look in the mirror. If someone asked, you could provide an objective list of your qualities. But you're not sure that 'loving yourself' is something you ever really learned how to do.
Sometimes you wonder if everyone is faking it, even the people who seem to have it all down to a science."
"Because you've never looked at yourself and felt blown away by the privilege of being in your own body, of having your own mind, of living your life. You've never felt that thrilling infatuation, that deep connection, that shit-eating grin kind of pride. Not about yourself. "
"And maybe that's it, after all, this fear that no one will ever truly feel about you the way you want to be felt about. Maybe what you want is someone to make you love yourself, to put sense into all that positive rhetoric, to make it so the aloneness of TC and blasting music in your ears at all times isn't the most happy place you can think of. Maybe you want someone who makes you so sure of how wonderful things are that you cannot help but to tell them your feelings first, even at the risk of being humiliated. Because you will know that, when you're telling them you love them, what you're really saying is "I love who I become when I am with you." "
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That's basically the entire article. GAH.
