Sunday, October 11, 2015

Looking for a square.

I am not very good with being candid. In my head there are things you talk about, and things that you swallow down and just… keep. I do a lot of keeping when someone hurts me, or treats me badly or unfairly. I grew up in a situation where kids had a place, and there were consequences if we stepped out of turn. I learnt very quickly that there was nothing positive to be gained by speaking out, and I still feel the weight of my upbringing now. 

 As an adult, I will be in complete inner turmoil, and angry and hurt, but completely unable to express my feelings at all because I don’t want to push my (entirely valid) feelings onto someone else. I try to be frank about what I need to be okay, but people don’t want to hear about whats broken. They just want you to wind yourself up so they can play with the dancing monkey. 

 My last relationship where for years my partner did not contribute financially to the household, physically in the bedroom or emotionally unless it suited. He once told me not to stand with him at venues because music was ‘business’, and nobody wanted to do business with the guy standing with me on his arm. It took another few years of similar conversations before I finally took the hint and left him. When you ask someone for an hour a week, and they can’t give it to you because “…What if Lemmy is in town”, you are kicked into this awful understanding that you have zero significant value in that person’s life. Except that you will cook, clean, pay for and be ‘available’ when required. When they go “okay I’ll be back for my stuff but right now I’m going partying with my cousin & don’t have time to talk about it”, you know that you made the right choice. Being the disposable convenience person feels like shit, and it made me question what my value was at all. It still does.

Which is why I am feeling like I am feeling at the moment. It feels like as positive as I try to be, those insecurities of feeling disposable keep coming up. I am trying really hard to combat them, but try as I might, being taken for granted triggers these feelings of complete insecurity and uselessness. It takes a lot of work to bring myself back to reasoning, and it takes a little longer each time because being the disposable person time and time again. 

 I get upset – groups of friends that I though I was close with disappearing into nothing time and time again. I wonder what is wrong with me. Being excluded from a group despite my efforts to be supportive. Why am I not welcome? Being in a relationship where I am taken for granted (again). What is wrong with me? All these things that I turn inside because of lack of outside information. Lack of someone being able to tell me I matter. And not being able to accept it from myself because time and time again it is proven that I really don’t. 

 I concede that I am so sensitive about it now that sometimes, people don’t even know they have hurt me. I walk into a room youre sitting in, you walk out as I sit down next to you. I know that sometimes it is me being unreasonable. But sometimes I know it’s not. I know I am being upset over completely reasonable things, but then what? I had a conversation a few days ago. 

My partner is friends with these beautiful blonde skinny cosplayers a few people who I have had issues with in the past and I asked if he would mind unfollowing them, thinking it would be no big deal. He literally laughed in my face and refused to talk, other than to say that he didn’t even care about them. He thought that it was so unreasonable that he told me that I should have more self-worth than to worry… But, I just had him laugh in my face. So, I was confused, and offended, and upset and hurt. I wonder if they don’t matter then why is he defending keeping them so hard? I asked him. Incredulous anger, and silence. At least if we had the conversation we could have come to some conclusion. Agreement. Understanding. But I went to sleep in tears, unconsoled and feeling like Im still that convenience girl I was last time. There is no lonlier place in the world.

 And it’s really hard to convince myself otherwise at the moment. Outside of my relationship I have my job, and that’s pretty much it. I have casual friends, but nobody I could really sit down and have a tea with and destress. I work in an area where being an ‘alternate person’ is a very clear disadvantage. Not officially, but my management sort of decided I was stupid, and ever since have assigned tasks that are at best dull, and in no way aligned with my pay scale. I had originally been in IT, but a restructure saw management assign me to a team in a corporate environment that was a lot less accepting. As easy as it is to book meetings and spell check, I have been unfortunately blessed with a brain that craves being utilised and challenged to be motivated. I will constantly raise the need for meaningful work with my management which until now has been to no avail. Apparently if you start the correct HR process, ass covering commences and suddenly I find myself with ample workload, and management crying foul that I would accuse them of preventing me from having meaningful work to engage in. 

 Many times, I have considered medication. I have depression and anxiety medication in my drawer at work in case one day things are just too much. They are most days, but every time I look to dull the pain I read the side effects, and I push through. Because As bad as I feel, they seem worse, somehow. Mostly. Some days I come closer than others, but always they end up in the drawer. Why? I just don’t think there is anything particularly wrong with me. I am in the wrong place. I am frustrated and stressed out. I am out of my element. I am out of place. I am the square peg. And the square peg is supposed to be square no matter how much the pills will take the edge off it. 

 *I take the pill, and I sit in a round hole. Uncomfortably. But I am a square. I sit in the round hole and tell myself I’m a circle. But no amount of telling myself that and squishing myself into the round hole will change the fact that I am square. I have corners. And I am sad because I need a square hole.* 

 So I continue on, sometimes in tears, sometimes frustrated, sometimes numb, hoping that things will change and trying to imagine just how I would do that. How would I leave? Where would I go? Is it possible to have a life that I wouldn’t dream of escaping? No matter where I go, there I will be. With the same insecurities in a new place. Ready to poison that too. Until I find the square hole I belong. 

 …I hope it exists.

Monday, February 9, 2015

Again, again

He said

She has the prettiest smile in all the west

She hides it

Behind fingers

Nobody wants to see

So she hides

 

She wants to hear

Again again

Tell me the thing

Till I can believe it

Tell me again

 

Just plain

Hiding behind the strange

She is just plain

Wish someone could see and say

Its okay

 

He said

Youre stronger than this

She isn’t she isn’t

Not today

So she hides

Behind crying eyes

 

Trying to hold the stern face

And seem angry till it goes away

Full of knots inside

We won’t eat for two days

So full and empty

 

She wants to hear

Again again

Tell me the thing

Till I can believe it

Tell me again

 

She wonders how

He loves her

Even though she is plain

And broken sometimes

 

She cries

And isn’t strong

She is just the squishy girl

And he is more and always was