Y’all. I’m an ornery person. I just am. There are moments when I desperately want things…that later I just stand there holding going, “Well, what the fuck am I going to do with this now????”
Compliments and Friendship are the two biggest of those things.
Compliments….that’s the part most of you will probably understand. Whether we admit it or not…we WANT people to think highly of us. Be it that we’re pretty or we’re smart or we’re funny….whatever it is. We want people to think highly of us because we think highly of them. And yet…at the same time…someone gives us a compliment and it’s like deer in headlights. Or, as an ex told me once, I look down and to the right and laugh with an uncomfortable “thanks”. (He wasn’t wrong…I still catch myself…Every. Damn. Time. someone gives me a compliment…head goes down…pointed towards the right shoulder…hiding the eyes…wait for it…wait for it… *uncomfortable laugh*…Hahahahaa….Thanks….
Why? Because the nice things that people say to me? They’re not how I see myself. I’m not ugly…I’m not especially attractive, either. I can be “cute”, but nothing worth compliments. I’m smart. I know I am. But a compliment is like a pedestal that I’ll fall off of when I do something stupid. Funny…ok, you can call me funny whenever you want. Not everyone appreciates my particular brand of humor, but…dude…I’m hilarious. 😉
But the rest of the compliments? Because that’s not how I see me…it feels…wrong when other people say they see me in those ways…it feels like they can’t really mean it.
And, so….ooopsie…did I blow up those compliments? Mah bad….
But I do this with friendship, too. I want to be liked. I want to be loved. I want people to WANT to be around me. I also know that people never stay. And, especially when I’m facing things that I don’t know how to handle…and I can’t be the person that they originally liked because I can barely survive each day…and I become more and more ornery and miserable and hermit-like…I stand there…holding these friendships that have been handed to me…that they won’t take back…and laugh uncomfortably…as I wonder how fast I can run if I just chuck it in the air and go.
For the same reason as compliments…
When I’m struggling with something that I don’t know how to get through…I know that people don’t stay in my life…they may love me for a little while, but they will leave. Because I’m not a loveable person…ESPECIALLY when I can’t be the person taking care of everyone else and making them laugh. So…their love and friendship…handed to me…I don’t know what to do with it because it scares me. Now…instead of blowing it up, like the compliments…I feel like it’s a bomb in my hands. I’m going to begin to trust it…I’m going to hold onto it…and then…when it blows up…it’s going to hurt that much more because I was holding on.
Now…while I don’t particularly love my face…I don’t really want it being blown off, either.
Basically, the more I think about it as I write…I want to deserve these things. I want to be deserving of compliments. I want to be these things that other people say they see in me. I want to be deserving of love and friendship. I want to be someone worth sticking around for.
But until I believe that I DO deserve them and can have them?
*Jazz Hands* Mom 