Apr 21, 2020
“Please understand me.”
This is what I wish I could tell you, mother.
What I could never tell you.
I never learned the words.
The child in me cowers alone, sat on the floor,
Clutching his knees to his chest, wondering,
“Why does she hate me?”
I never learned to ask.
And I never learned why.
I’ve regressed to tell you,
“Please don’t hate me.”
The words escape much more weakly than I anticipated
In a tremble.
Funny, I’d not the slightest longing to hear you say,
“I love you.”
I’ve never had the capability of saying those words either.
And I know this shield I’ve constructed to keep out your vitriol
Can’t distinguish between hate and love.
And so it keeps out both, and more.
These words I’ve learned on behalf of my younger self.
Please understand me when I say,
“I reject you.”
It’s hard to say because it’s so harsh.
Did she mess me up? Or did I mess myself up? Am I wrong to assume that I’m messed up? Am I not being kind enough to myself?
I don’t have many memories left of my childhood anymore. The ones I do remember are the most negative moments, including when I felt suicidal and jumped off the back deck of my old house. I’ve been feeling more emotional lately. Maybe it has something to do with how I’ve been having flashbacks of these moments.
In my mind, I’ve essentially rebuilt, brick-for-brick, the foundations of what I believe a family should be. My role model for a father is Jonathan Kent from Smallville… an honest, hard-working man with integrity and simple charm. I like the way he raises his son to be the best man he can be. There’s a lot of goodness and warmth portrayed in that television family.
And I’ve been building the image of what I believe to be a healthy romantic partnership. No one really gives you a straight answer on these… probably because not many people have the answer to begin with.
What kind of partner do I want to be? That’s something that I’ve been piecing together my entire life. It started with a girl in elementary school whom I had a crush on. Most days she wore a bow in her brown hair. Every day, I couldn’t talk to her. As my dad was picking me up from school, I saw her from the window of the car. She was sitting on a wooden flower planter next to a boy who had just started at our school. She was quite smitten with him, and I felt envy for the first time. I also felt helpless, and the seed of self-loathing burrowed itself into my psyche.
Then in middle school, I developed another crush, again as a bystander. She was a grade above me, and I saw her sitting across the lunchroom every day. I’d sneak furtive glances and daydream about gaining the courage to speak to her one day.
Then came Jane. She was something else. I’d imagine us getting married and having kids. Every morning I’d close my eyes and get high, fantasizing about us being a couple and how wonderful that would be. Every night I’d get high again the same way. I wanted that one person who would understand me as my mother never did. Jane was kind and cared about things like the environment and charity, not to mention she was so smart and beautiful, too.
Then came Nell. I was 17. That seed of self-loathing had fully bloomed into a blight upon the landscape of my heart. I could talk now, but just badly enough to feel even more like shit about myself. You can’t be someone’s boyfriend if you’re awkward and can’t carry a conversation, I bemoaned. I came up with countless other reasons why I wasn’t good enough for her. I was damaged, different, and unattractive. Yet… she listened to me. She heard me and understood me. For the first time, someone filled the empty cup of my heart with that which was missing. And then after understanding me so completely, rejected me.
I was reeling from the pain of what seemed to be an affirmation of all the negative things I believed about myself… the pain of someone looking straight into your soul, recognizing exactly what was there, and then recoiling in disgust.
That’s when Elizabeth came into my life. She said, “I want to understand you.” But I couldn’t bring myself to tell her. I couldn’t share the deepest parts of me, because I believed I was revolting. I associated fully sharing my love with pain… letting someone understand me and see my barren soul would fill them with revulsion and push them away. And why wouldn’t it? Not only was I an invalid, I now had the scars of unrequited love and rejection marring my self-worth. If Elizabeth knew about the depths of my feelings for Nell, it would hurt her. But I ended up hurting her anyway. I was set up to lose in every direction.
I’m grateful for her. All she did was love me, and I couldn’t pull myself through. I blew it. I couldn’t find the answer to my problems fast enough. Ironically, it was only when we broke up that I was able to work through the feelings about Nell that I’d repressed. I wouldn’t let myself think about her when I was with Elizabeth, thinking it would all just go away. Well, it didn’t. I wish I can apologize to her one day.
Now it’s Siobhan. I feel like I’m finally ready for a real relationship. I’ve worked past the rejection, and I’m cleansing the image of whom I believe myself to be. I don’t think I’m so cringe-inducing anymore. I want to show Siobhan these parts of me. I wouldn’t ask this of anybody unless I felt like I (mostly) understood myself first.
That’s what this journal has been about… understanding myself. That’s what everything that I do has been about. After all, how can I ask anyone to understand me when I haven’t done it myself? I want what my mother couldn’t give me. My music… my cult… this journal… these are all bridges that I’m building to connect me to the people closest to me in my future. They’re bridges to get me over this river of insecurity, my fear of abandonment, and the feeling of being unattractive and rejected by everyone.
I know I’m a good person. I know that now. Any girl would be lucky to be with someone like me. That seems boastful, but based on the person I’ve become… the person I am now in this moment, I believe it. All that needs to happen is people need to see it.
Right now, the only one I want that to happen with is her. My heart is set on Siobhan. Why does it have to be her? I suppose my mind just wants to romanticize my own life. This character they’ve all been playing… she’s the foil to whom I am. She’s someone that I created and represents all the fears I had about myself. She’s probably exactly what I needed to grow throughout my life, as painful as it was. What she asked and wanted from me were the very areas where I needed to grow the most. And, I’ve been working on those things for years. It’s half of the bridge.
The other half of the bridge is the real person who I’m going to end up with. I want to understand her too, if she wants me to. She likely has a different kind of childhood she’s trying to heal from. Whatever it is, I want to be there for her, and to be the person she trusts to heal and grow together with. I want to help her build her bridge so that we can connect.
That’s my greatest driving force. My “motivation”. I put that in quotes because I’m always saying to seek inspiration, not motivation. Motivation is forcing yourself to do something you don’t really want to do in the first place. Inspiration is a divine upwelling of feeling to be better than you are. Which one is it?
I know now. I know what Siobhan is, what Nell was. I’m seeking a being in this world who’s capable of understanding me… from the isolation I felt thinking there was no one else like me with selective mutism, to dealing with a mother who was in over her head, to my melodrama and depression, to figuring out my sexual identity, my cultural identity, and racial identity, and to all the other colorful plethora of issues I’ve struggled with.
This is my truth derived from my childhood. I want safety, and I want understanding. I’d give anything for these, and I’d gladly give something just as noble in return. I want to love and to be loved. To find one who will want to connect their bridge with mine. That’s my inspiration.