"I may dissect each little thing and put myself out there so much but at least that means that I still care... You may not get hurt or make an ass of yourself that way but you don't fall in love that way either. You have not won. You're alone. I may do a lot of stupid shit but I'm still a lot closer to love than you are."
He's Just Not That Into You
***
"'Have you ever considered falling in love without the madly part?’
'Well, where's the fun in that?!’”
Loser
***
There is something wrong with me.
I am incapable of having a normal relationship. I am incapable of casual coffees, once a week dates. I am full on– all or nothing.
I hate to be patronized. I'm thirty. I've been though enough by now to know how to play this game. I've had more relationships that I can count on my fingers and toes.
I know that men are just stupid, that they don't hurt me on purpose, it's just that they don't see it... what hurts me would not hurt them.
I know, thanks very much, that I need to 'love myself before someone else loves me’. I spent most of my early twenties solidifying that one.
I know that people are turned off, budding relationships ruined, by neediness and want and vulnerability. (What is that concept that we all seem to invest in? If someone is needy, we push them away. The more they need, the more we tell them to stand on their own two feet. I read this post at Glow’s place a while back and it just about broke me... why do we turn people away when they are begging us to hold them up?)
I know all of that... I always have done. But I’ve never paid any attention. I feel attraction with intensity. When I fight, it's with fire. When I love... it's with some irrational part of me.
I think I know why I fall so hard, so fast; why I've learnt those lessons a thousand times in the past and still choose to ignore them.
I'm looking for someone who'll push past that. Who'll choose to see me at my weakest, and be OK with that. Who'll see the need and the hurt and think to themselves that, perhaps, they could just love me anyway.
No surprises. Whoever it is, the faceless dates I'm referring to, they need to know what they are getting themselves in to. They need to know, in the first instance, how fragile I am, how easily burnt I can be.
So if they need to run, they can run. If they want to bail, they have time to do so. I dare them... this is the worst of me... can you handle this...?
And most of them take the offer and leave... who wants to be with someone that intense? And really, there's no one to blame but myself. What I do is irrational, and I'm only hurting myself.
But one day, I'll find someone who will stay. And they'll have seen the worst of me already. So it won't be a shock when they discover what's underneath... when they discover that black, sucking hole of need that lies within.
Someone with the strength to hold my hands, to stop the gravity of it from pushing me in. And who can keep their own feet stable on the edge of that abyss, too.
I refuse to believe that that someone doesn't exist. I refuse to believe that there isn't someone who will want me... messy, painful bits and all.
There has to be. What would be the point of it all, if there isn't...?