002. The Narrow Ledge

This is my third time starting this entry, because my thoughts are so convoluted and tangled and I can't make sense of any of it.


The short version is this: I don't know how to be compassionate without being a doormat.


I was ready to make a quick sketch of My History With Damaged People, but it was turning into somewhat of a novella, and if we're telling the truth I could probably publish an entire book on the subject. Everyone could get their own chapter. The Liar, The Whore, The Maniac, The Suicidal Boyfriend. It's as if I have a tractor-beam in my heart that draws these people to me.

A lot of it has to do with my upbringing. I grew up in a small town and went to a small school. Pre-Hot Topic boom all the weirdos were basically winging it; there wasn't a cookie-cutter approach to being a weird kid the way there came to be in the post-Avril world. I myself looked like I had just crawled out from under Les Innocents, lots of pieced-together thrifted black articles, the occasional pathetic nu-metal tshirt. There wasn't a standard uniform. Even today, as an adult, it's easy to spot a metalhead and give the nod, but at that time it was just. The few of us who were weird. And along with being "weird" came the fact that we were all fucking crazy.

So, without getting into it like I'd originally planned, I'll just keep it as: All of my best friends as an adolescent ultimately wound up being toxic and abusive and broke so many little pieces from me that I'm still trying to find.

Then, as an adult, we can gloss over the experience of being ex-communicated from my family because they didn't appreciate the burden of my social anxiety, and couldn't muster up the empathy to meet me halfway on issues like The Phone, in which I don't call as often as I should because I am paralyzed with fear, and they chalk it up to me not caring about them and generally being a Terrible Person. Now it's me that's the damaged one.



And my point in all of this is that it's carved a very narrow path in which to live. My family disowning me has been, to date, the most painful experience in my life, and one that I haven't fully learned to cope with yet. So, feeling this rejection so keenly, all the time, makes me strive to be patient and empathetic and compassionate. It makes me look back on the old imperfect friendships with shame, because, although they were toxic and unhealthy, I try to make myself believe that I could've salvaged them somehow, I could've helped these people, and if I'd been more patient to the fact that they were mentally ill instead of writing it off as them being assholes, it would've been different, and maybe I'd sleep better at night.






I'm setting the stage here to discuss the recent events involving The Suicidal Boyfriend. Who's now the ex-boyfriend. And the reason that I've started the entry up multiple times now is because when I get to this part I wilt. It's bothering me, and I keep thinking I want to talk about it, and write it down so that I can organize my thoughts, but. When it's actually time, when it's in front of my face, I think it just still hurts too much.

Everything involving him always opens up a floodgate. There's a thread going back the whole time I've known him, just past seven years now, and if I get upset about one thing I always wind up getting drawn into the next thing and the next thing. And in the end I'm always emotionally maimed, and past the end, I wind up blaming myself. Because I haven't learned how to stick up for myself, because cutting him out of my life always conflicted with my need to be compassionate and empathetic, and I so desperately tried to undo the mistakes I'd made with the other fucking lunatics who've come through my life.

It's so hard to talk about because whenever I bring up the bad things about him, I feel so deeply ashamed that I put up with it for so long. There's another side to the coin, of course, and I have to keep telling myself that. Things weren't always bad. He's sick but he's not a bad person. I'm strong enough to bear the brunt of his illness if that's what it takes to get him through. I love him and that's something I'm willing to do for him. But when I talk about the bad things. They just seem so overpowering. And my friends would judge me, and give me irrelevant advice, and after a while I knew I couldn't keep coming to them about it, over and over like a broken record. I kept so much of it to myself and it makes me feel so suffocated.


So it's a lot to talk about. I don't have a coherent way to get it out yet. But it's here, it's in me. I need to chip away it a little at a time until I can come up with something cohesive to say.




It's okay with me that damaged people are drawn to me. I think it's something I'm even proud of. It fits with my goal of being compassionate and patient and saintly, and all this experience has probably made me a good listener and a good friend. But I've seen how it can be. I know it can get abusive. I know there are lines to draw when it's not worth it, when it isn't reciprocated in some way. And as much as I wish I could be a saint for everyone in my life, sometimes I just don't have the energy anymore.