#too-muchness

Today I Crave: Being Held

You’re a work in progress. You recognize the value of refusing to hate yourself, but you haven’t figured out how to stop hating yourself on a day-to-day basis yet. You know what you need from a relationship in order to feel satisfied, but you don’t know how to tolerate actually getting it. You still have to believe that you’re someone who’ll fuck everything up. You’re so used to believing in failure that believing in happiness feels unfamiliar. All these things are 100 percent normal and expected. People rarely realize their full potential at age 25. But there is some value to saying, out loud, “NO ONE ELSE CAN SAVE ME.” I think before I accepted that, I was pretty lost. People will love you, sure, but no one will save you. You have to save yourself. You have to decide that you’re smart and talented and that, once you have a little time and space and clarity, you will figure out how to focus and work hard. You will understand the full breadth of your abilities. You have to save yourself by resisting the urge to become a question mark. You have to save yourself by refusing to ask for other people’s approval. Asking for other people’s approval is like begging for a fix. It’s a shortcut. Pay attention to how it feels to even ask. Pay attention to the feeling you get inside when you’re about to say “Is this going to work for you? Can you stand to be around me? Will I eventually get on your nerves? Will you decide you can’t handle me?” Pay attention to that terrified feeling, and notice how much more terrified you get when you turn it into a question, and then wait for an answer. Decide for yourself instead. Pay attention to how it feels the moment you resolve to address and soothe these feelings of self-doubt and distress on your own. Learn how to tell yourself that you are good and worthy. You are worthy even on your worst days. Learn to believe in the value of caring a whole hell of a lot. Learn to enjoy being your own savior. Learn to ask yourself tough questions, and learn to answer them in reassuring ways. […] The illusion that you’ve lost ground, that you’re losing yourself, is all in your head. You are learning, every day. This is your adventure. Not every single thing will go according to plan. Your boyfriend might dump you at some point. Or he might love you like crazy until you outgrow him and you decide to move on alone. People will tell you to care less about these outcomes, but you will care more than you can possibly stand. It’s time to accept that this is how you will live. It’s time to stop fighting yourself, day in and day out. It’s time to enjoy the way you are right now. Your desperation is beautiful. Your disappointed Chihuahua eyes are beautiful. You have to see that, and feel that, and know it in your terrified, shivering heart.

You aren’t too much for other people. Other people are too much for you. You aren’t respecting their words or their actions. You’re telling them that their words and actions mean things that they don’t mean. They’re offering you water and you’re pretending that it’s wine. That makes them feel pressured to bring you more wine. That makes them feel weird. That makes them feel lonely, actually, like you can’t hear them or see them at all. That makes them feel like you really are as bad and broken as you seem to suspect, based on how often you ask them to reassure you that you’re not bad or broken at all. Listen to me: You are not bad. You do deserve love. But you are broken. Once you accept that you are broken, and start protecting yourself and caring for yourself the way one would protect a broken thing, you won’t feel quite as terrible anymore. But you have to take a hard look at yourself first. Let’s start here: You are dating fundamentally unavailable [people] and asking them to pretend that they are available. They keep reminding you of their limits, reminding you that it’s the evening and the sky is blue and the water is water, and you say, “Yeah, yeah, it’s fine. I’m cool with it.” But then you start taking the blue sky very, very personally. This [person] told you very clearly: “I cannot give you what you want.” Your therapist told you: “You keep dating fundamentally unavailable [people].” You ignored these words and told your own story instead. But even as you disrespect the true needs and desires of the people around you, you also disrespect your own true needs and desires. You wrote, “I guess I thought that I was doing okay at not taking things too seriously.” Here, “doing okay” equals not taking things too seriously. But aren’t you someone who naturally takes things very seriously? Do you see how you’re trying to train yourself to be “good,” yet being “good” always seems to mean being the opposite of how you actually are?