why me?

“Love is never any better than the lover.” – Toni Morrison

Today, I am so angry. I’m angry at the world for being such a cruel place where boys and men use guns to slaughter innocent people. A world where we care more about profits than each other. A world where we are still so divided. I’m angry that we have to keep having this same fucking conversation. Pretending like it’s video games, and sugar cereal, and parenting slips. Why do we keep doing this to ourselves?

I am angry at myself for painting all of the red flags green. I am angry at him for doing this to us. Why? I go over and over everything in my head a thousand times and I keep coming back to this simple question. Why didn’t you care more about me than yourself? Why did you jeopardize everything we had? Why did you make a stupid decision and ruin my birthday? Why, when you knew how much I miss my mom, and how hard birthdays have been, would you go out and get blackout drunk and sit at a strip club for hours not answering your phone? WHY? This feels childish, to put it out here for anyone to see. But I’m angry and I’m still reeling and after four months I thought I’d be further on down the road by now. In a little over a week, I’ll see him at a friend’s wedding. My insides are churning just thinking about it. A strip club? That’s our ending? And even though I threw you out and made the decision to end us, you were the one who really did.

Choosing to completely uproot my life a day before my thirty-fifth birthday was not something I thought I’d ever be doing. Somehow, it seemed less uncomfortable than sitting down to dinner with twenty of our closest friends, pretending everything was OK for the thousandth time. I had no choice. I was no longer willing to ride the proverbial merry-go-round of “I’m sorry’s” and “it’s different.” I was finally ready to try and put myself first. I’m still not sure what inside of me changed. When I look back, I see pure rage, hurt, and panic as the driving forces. Maybe the little girl inside of me snapped.

It seems like I’ve been taking care of someone my whole life. Like I was born into a relationship I wasn’t ready for. My mom did everything she could to give me everything she didn’t have and somewhere along the way I became her best friend, her confidante, her keeper, instead of just her daughter. I know now that I am what’s called a parentified child, something I was initially defensive about because even now that she’s gone, I am still her best friend, her confidante, her keeper. As I continue to explore the ways in which being parentified has shaped my life, I’ve come face to face with certain truths that have helped me better understand why I am the way that I am. In my past relationships, I have been a compulsive caretaker. I’ve had major issues with boundaries and trust. I’ve had issues with self-esteem and seeking validation everywhere except within myself. Delving into the ‘why’ behind my actions has snapped together a few of the missing pieces and allowed me to start to process the weight of the traumas I’ve carried into my own adult life. I had to ask myself, and am still asking myself, why did I choose to make a life with someone who continued to choose himself over me? Why did I not listen when he showed me over and over who he really was?

Somewhere on that threshold of bursting into my thirty-fifth year of life, I had what’s known as an “oh shit” moment. My development has most definitely been stunted by my accelerated “adulthood” and my seemingly “abnormal” childhood. So here I am, stuck somewhere in between processing and practicing. Overdeveloped in so many ways and trying to catch up in so many others. Shortly after I ended things, my gut reaction was to scatter back to the comforts of my previous habits and dysfunctional relationship; the place I once hailed my safe space. My fears and uncertainty about the future have pushed me so close to making that phone call, where I don’t even know what to say because I am still so hurt and angry, but I so desperately want to be back there. As I sit with my anger, my fear, and my sadness, I realize that I’m stuck in the middle. I am in between holding on and letting go. I am in between broken child and whole adult. I am in between empowered and afraid. I have no idea what’s ahead of me. I only know that I am not willing to go backwards. I know that through my tears, and seeing red, and wondering why, I am worth the chance to truly get to know myself.