I Bleed

Is everyone okay out there? 

Am I okay?

I feel like everyone I know is going through extreme anguish. Collectively, all our hearts are breaking. We are bleeding. Dying out. Grasping at love as it slips through our fingers. I watch the tears falling from faces, of people I love and care about, as they ugly cry. It's cleansing, I am sure, but it is disturbing at the least. I hug, I hold hands, I rub backs, kiss the tops of heads, and I stand in my kitchen ugly crying alone. 

I listen when he talks about realizing that his whole childhood has been ripped away from him, now as an adult, he is looking at his inner child and doesn't know what to do. I have been there. I still try to coax my inner child out of her shell and speak up when she is being silenced by others. I understand it. Maybe not all the way, because I am not living anyone else's experience, but I do feel the pain. I feel the pain that he has when he shares the way he feels alone. He disappears for hours, sometimes almost a day, but I keep checking in. I keep reaching out. I didn't want to do anything for a whole month, the hardest month of my life, I thought about how my life was imploding. I still got up and kept trying to give my heart out to people. I think, miserably. 

I nod my head when she talks about a man she loves who treats her like she's the problem. She communicates well and sets boundaries, which he doesn't like at all. He feels entitled to her pleasure and pain. I listen, I soothe, I let her ugly cry, and I check in on her to make sure she is okay. She yelled at me once and I let her and she never apologized for it, and I let her. She's young, she will grow into herself one day. I tell myself.

I hold her like a baby, even though she's way too big for it, and I rub her back while we sway gently. It calms her down, but she had to get here by ugly crying. She let out all her emotions at once, in a big burst. She's getting better about letting me know what's going on before she gets mean or lashes out at me, unnecessarily. I feel her pain, knowing how he talks to her, how he treats her. She knows she can trust me and I will always let her tell me anything and everything. I will always hold her and rub her back, kiss her head. She is too young to feel this way. These are really hard feelings for adults, too. I hope I can give her a better, more emotionally secure home than I ever had. I promise while I squeeze her tighter. 

I let him yell at me. He tells me that I am always playing favorites and that he feels left out, even though I told him I felt like he was pushing me out. He tells me that he hates how he feels in the middle. That everything is imploding all the time. That it feels like too much and he just wants everything to be normal. I furrow my brow and think, I want that for you, too. I really am trying to provide that. I want nothing more than to have a good relationship with him. I let him keep yelling at me until I thank him for sharing his thoughts, his fears, his broken heart. He tells me he doesn't want to talk anymore. Begrudgingly says, I love you too, I just want to go to bed now. And I let him go after a few squeezes. 

I fill up a pitcher with water. Everything is wilting around me. I am wilting, too. I take a sip of water out of my own glass, for myself. Then I go around and let water flow out of the pitcher and into my plants. I fill up the flowers that live on my table, now. I decide to move them so they can be enjoyed. I make it look like I live here. That there was some thought put into it. Something was worth fixing up for me. I let the water pour out of myself, too. I think about how broken I feel. How my heart is always waiting. I put it on hold for people. I put it on hold for myself. I let people tell me how much they hurt and I set my own aside, it's too much for me, it's too much for them. I can't let it out because then I am afraid of what it would mean. What does it mean to hold onto this much pain. My heart aches and I know it. I know that it hurts. It hurts knowing that I can't do anything about it hurting. I just have to let it hurt. I have to let it linger in limbo. I am afraid to be vulnerable. I have given my heart out so much and so freely to people who do not deserve it. I am saving my heart for people who do. I do let some people in, more than I ever have before. Less than I have to love. I hold it in and it starts to hurt. It is in pain to know that I let people push me aside. I know that part of that pain is a wound that needs healing. My inner me is a sad baby who didn't get held when she was lashing out. I was scolded for being rude. I didn't get the regulation of others to help me. I remember being so young and feeling like I had to hold onto my heart myself. That I wasn't able to start letting it heal until I was much older. It wasn't until the last few years that I know the depth of that heartbreak. That it's just been hurt so many times, it was destroyed. There was hardly anything left of it. I had to chisel my way back into my heart. I feel like it is still waiting. Still hoping. That feeling of you'll never find someone to sweep you off your feet is always lingering there. The doubt. I deserve to be told I am lovable and worthy of love. I stood here waiting for almost forty years to feel like I mean it. I mean it when I say I am lovable and worthy of love. Even if I'm not healed. I give myself out to people all the time. I just need someone to hold me and tell me that it's okay. It's okay to be hurt. It's okay to help people feel better. That everything will be okay. Because, I have a big heart that is worth giving out to people. So I deserve to know that. I deserve to believe it, too. I deserve to have someone tell me that they love me and want to spend time with me. That I am worth spending time with. It's hard to believe it when I'm always alone. I don't get check-ins. I do the checking in. I make sure everything feels okay. I want to feel like things aren't so one-sided. That my time is valuable. That what I want is heard. That I can cry my eyes out, ugly cry my heart out, and still get a hug and soothed. It's been a really long time since I let someone be that place for me and a long time since I was rejected by that person. Maybe I still hurt a little from that, too. To feel like I can be myself and feel safe, comfortable, vulnerable, and then realize that it was not it. Now, I know that I needed that person at the time, but I held on too long. I tried to make someone into something they weren't. I wonder if I am doing it again. I didn't pursue him, so why do I feel like it's so one-sided? Is it that hard to ask to be loved back? I race through all the heartache I am feeling and it isn't all on one person. It isn't all on me. It's not on a handful of people. The blame is spread out, but who takes accountability for all this heartache? I try to take responsibility for my own part in it. I know that I do, but it's not enough sometimes. Sometimes, it's just shit. And sometimes you feel heartbroken, anyways. It's so hard to have someone you once loved, once gave your heart out to, tell you that you are horrible. To tell you that you are a terrible person. Especially, when all you do is clean up their mess. Self-regulating for three and it's on over-drive because it isn't just normal, average, everyday feelings. It's a lot more than can be understood, unless you have gone through this before. This kind of abuse. It feels impossible to live through. But, yet, here I am. Living through it. Doing my best to let those feelings pass through me and allow myself to still be vulnerable to those who deserve it. Including myself. Allowing myself to hold onto the stupid idea that I will find love and get married again. That I will have a partner who cares about me and my kids like I do. There's no way that person exists. I care too much to even imagine it to be real. My heart hurts too much to accept that I deserve it. Even if it existed. Even if he did exist. If he existed, then where is he? He's not drying my tears and kissing the top of my head. He's somewhere else, I guess. I keep "getting through it" all the time and still, there's no end. I know that things are better than they were. I am trying to build something beautiful here, and it is looking okay at the moment. I know if I keep trying, it will be better. It's not exactly what I need right now, but it is better than I ever had. Having a big, caring heart is a blessing and a curse. I have lots of love to give and lots of heartache to go with it. 

I am skipping a few chapters, because this one really speaks to me right now:

In what ways did you learn that in order to receive love, you always needed to give more and over extend yourself?

I felt like I always had the door slammed in my face by my parents and siblings. I was always annoying my siblings. I was told "I don't want to talk about it" (and still do get that told to me, actually) when I would try to talk about difficult feelings. Sometimes, I would just scream and get angry because I wasn't heard and no one wanted to discuss it, either. I learned that if I went out of my way to listen and care about others, they might let me share, too. Even if they didn't ask how I was feeling. I would share how I felt and hope they could see I understood them, too, and we could share together. People don't want you to share how you are feeling when they didn't ask, though. And no one asks how you are doing and truly want to know.

Is there an area or relationship in your life that you feel resentment about?

OH YEAH. Big time. My parents, especially my dad, I feel so much resentment towards. I just want to be loved and asked after. It's not that fucking hard, but either it is for them, or I suck. Whichever the answer, depends on my mood. I am leaning heavily towards I do not suck these days. 

What need of yours isn't being met?

Feeling loved. Cherished. Like I matter to anyone. (I do have some people who care and do reach out and give me hugs, it's not that I am completely void of all touch, but that is really only in the last year that I have felt this way. Generally, I am lacking in feeling like people give a shit about what I feel.)

What would it look like to practice boundary setting in this area or relationship?

Saying, I think that is something you should talk to your therapist about more often. Not asking someone to tell me how they feel or whatever. I just should stop being kind to people when I need compassion. (Not that I mean to be mean, but just stop going out of my way to be kind when I am not getting valued in this way.)

I honor my needs and communicate them with compassion. I am not responsible for managing other people's emotions.

I don't need everyone to take care of me and not all the time. But I really wish I had a man who would take care of me, right now. It's the same thing I have wished for my whole life. A dad who would be emotionally available and then when I was older, a boyfriend/fiancé/husband who would be emotionally available to me. What a tragedy. I wish I could reset my heart. Just click a button and reboot with all the emotional needs met throughout my life. I could love and be loved respectfully, mutually, and healthily. That's my wish. But, it is my responsibility to heal this heart and I keep trying to do just that.