Let's talk patterns.
I went to summer camp after ninth grade, one of the few things my parents paid for without question, probably just to get rid of me for ten days. It was transformative; I made friends immediately, and after camp, I wrote long letters to at least fifteen girls. Only four or five wrote back, and only one continued writing through the rest of the school year.
At my high school, I had a small group of core friends, but I never fit in to the larger class, and even those friends didn't seek me out very often; I was someone they hung out with if no one else was around. I would ask them to go places, or if they needed a ride. I was always more enthusiastic than anyone else about doing something together.
Every year, there would be someone new at school, and I would make friends and get to know them. For the first month or so, we'd be inseparable - Ali, Chris, Cynthia, the list goes on. Then they'd find their place in the school and I'd see them occasionally, but really the friendship was over. They'd found their real friends and didn't need me anymore.
In 10th grade, I was a page for our state's legislature, and for a week, I was dropped into a cross-section of teenagers from across the state. After the week was over, I wrote letters to about ten of them. Most of them didn't write back. One boy did, and I built an entire imaginary relationship with him until I received a letter where he boasted about vandalizing mailboxes and I realized he wasn't the person I'd imagined.
When I started college, I loved the intellectual, late night conversations that usually started over coffee and sometimes cigarettes, discussing philosophy, literature, politics, whatever, and led to talking about personal ideas and histories. Full disclosure: These were (usually) guys who I (usually) ended up sleeping with. Looking back, that was probably their objective, but I was a pretty easy target in those days.
In my twenties, in the infancy of the internet, I placed a personals ad on yahoo online and emailed with a number of guys on and off for about a year. Chad held my attention; he was smart, funny, and thoughtful. He was careful about his feelings, having lost his fiance to an illness two years before. I respected that, but a few months later I had a road trip planned to his city, and I wanted to meet him. He demurred, and I couldn't understand why; it didn't make any sense to me. We never emailed again.
I could tell more stories, but I think you've probably got it by now. I can't let go. For years I thought it was my failing --- why was I so different from other people? Why did I hold on so tight to people who really didn't value me? Why didn't I know that normal people didn't care about me as much as I cared about them? Why was I so broken?
It took a long time for me to put the pieces together. I was asked a question by my counselor: "Wasn't there anyone in your life when you were young who reflected you back to you, who really saw who you were?" I had to stop and think about that, think about my past and all the years growing up in my parents' house, all the years of bullying at school, all the teachers and classmates and babysitters and hairdressers and ----
You can see I'm digging pretty deep here. And coming up empty.
My mom saw only competition. A reflection of her faults. Someone to blame. Someone to hate and abuse.
My dad saw someone to keep in line. A source of labor to be cultivated. A threat to my mom.
Both of them were highly motivated to keep me from seeing my strength, my power, my abilities for what they were. If I knew who I was and what I could do, I could get away, and they wouldn't be able to blame me for their problems anymore. They would have no outlet for their bad feelings, their abuse.
Now it's clear to me, clear as day. My whole life, I was literally starving for connection. I was dying for someone to see me. Of course I wrote letters to anyone I met who showed me any kindness! Of course I created whole relationships out of thin air just to pretend that I was connecting with someone, anyone at all. I was dying inside, shriveling up, shouting and pounding on the walls from inside a hollowed out tree, staring from behind my own eyes as person after person looked at me and saw nothing but what they could get from me, what they could use me for, what they wanted to see.
I know now that I wasn't broken; I couldn't have been more wrong in how I posed the question. Why did I hold on so tight? I was holding on to keep myself alive, to keep from dying until I found someone else to talk to, to squeeze out the last bit of food before I starved to death.
These days I know I have connections with others who see me --- maybe not many, but a core group who accept and like me because, not in spite of who I am. I will always have a hard time handling that stomach-dropping situation when you realize you like them more than they like you, but that's part of life. It's just lovely to know that there's a conversation just around the corner, and I can have a snack whenever I want.
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