a performance of a lifetime

a quick, reflective one

I am used to being alone. This is not a thing that started for me during the pandemic, and it is not a comfort all the time. It treads the line of a survival tactic more than anything else. 

Growing up in an environment that was tense and bordered on explosive at times, and then going to school the next day like everything was normal makes you comfortable being alone. It was a performance of a lifetime. Keep an act up, and for a while, you can believe it. Live in two realities. No one knows how you are feeling. You don't either because your “neither good nor bad,” is so haywired that even if someone asked, “Hey, how are you doing,” the answer you think that can save you and everyone else in the conversation from the whirlwind emotions is “I’m doing alright.” 

I did not grow comfortable with being alone, but with the feeling that if I have to be this way for the rest of my life, then that is okay. I will survive like I always do. 

But then people happened. 

During one of my therapy sessions, I admitted that I feel like I don't take an active role in friendships. That my whole life, for some reason, people globbed onto me, this sometimes off-putting girl who was terrified about people leaving her first but afraid of someone knowing her. And for an even stranger reason, they stayed. 

Of course, my therapist did her job and asked if any of my friends ever said that and gave any indication of that. And of course, I said no. That doesn’t silence the voice in my head that I will end up alone, and once someone knows me too well, they’ll say, “Alright, that’s enough,” and go ahead with their lives with someone better. Less me, and it would probably be for the best. 

It is easy to listen to that voice and surrender to it. And sometimes, it gets a little too loud. But then I think about my mom, who has probably seen the worst sides of me even if I tried to hide it from her. I think about her showering me with kisses when I am still in bed. Pure love. And when I talk to my friends back home and my few friends that I have somehow made during college, I feel good. I could do this, be good, enough. Is that not what everyone wanted? To be enough for the people we love and care about? 

I don’t know when or if I will ever get over that feeling of inadequacy. It is a constant gnawing creature, but I can decide how big or small it is. I am trying to get over the repulsion I feel when I acknowledge people actually care about me for me, but I am getting used to it. I deserve to be loved and cared for and surrounded by people who want the best for me.