The only one who maybe should have.
I've been feeling a bit off for the last 24 hours or so. Visited some hard memories last night, thought some painful thoughts. I thought the processing I did last night might be enough, in conjunction with sleeping in, to get away from the raw sense of it, but I woke up still feeling the faintest sting behind my eyes, one of the surest signs that my emotions need attention; something is bothering me enough to make me potentially cry.
Last night the memories of all the people who had never chosen me shoved their way to the forefront of everything else, and I spent the better portion of the night talking to myself silently, trying to make sense of the feeling that suddenly felt strong enough to actually hurt like a fresh wound. Why does it hurt that much, to just remember those moments, and those faces? Why does it feel like the scar tissue never fully healed, that my flesh could be ripped open again so easily, so rapidly? Why did it hurt so much then, that it still hurts this much now?
And it did hurt that much then. When the realization sunk in that Erica hadn't chosen me, I stopped speaking to her. When Richard didn't choose me, I changed schools. When Gabe didn't choose me, I lashed out violently. When Adam didn't choose me, I lay paralyzed and sobbing on my floor for several hours before I managed to peel myself off the floor and make it to my bed, to cry myself to sleep and keep crying for several more days. And when Aaron didn't choose me, I tried to kill myself. There is more to each of those stories, of course, but in a simplistic sense, there is a clear pattern. When I decide I want someone to choose me, and they don't, I have done anything to get away from the pain of that rejection. It got to a point that I would have died to get away from having to feel that pain one more time.
My reaction is clearly stronger than that most others would have in similar situations, which is an indicator that something deeper is certainly going on. Today, I recognize that none of the people I thought should have chosen me had any obligation to do so, and it was unfair to me and them to expect so much. You can't really expect anyone in the world to choose you in such an immediate and absolute sense, with the exception of perhaps your parents. One of my idols, Tsipora, described to me what she feels is the responsibility of the parent: "A child relies on the parents for its sense of self-worth, because the child is too young to know yet how to regulate their self-esteem. The parents' job is to help the child feel worth it, always, and to avoid telling them they are not worth it. There will be plenty of other people in the world to damage the child's worth. The parents must show the child they are always worthy."
My heart contracted painfully when her words reached the processing center of my brain, and remembering it now is causing the most pointed form of the pain I've been feeling since last night to come to the surface. The one person that you might be able to convince me had a responsibility for helping me not grow up feeling worthless, but failed to fulfill that responsibility, is my dad. Thinking this thought made me cry last night, and may again today. When I think of my dad and let myself think this thought, it hurts so much that I start to shake a little. I don't like to admit it very often, but I know that deep inside me is still the child version of myself. In the depths of my brain are all my baser instincts, and my immediate and unregulated emotions. When I think of the fact that I have never felt like my own father chose me, I can't help but cry, because it is that instantly heartbreaking, still. Regardless of any reason he had for not choosing me, I can't help but feel like he should have, that it was his job. It's what he signed up for when he knocked up my mom, wasn't it? Why would he bother marrying her and staying at all, if he was just going to be a stranger that lived in our house instead of a father, or a husband?
The tears have started again. I can't think this thought without them. It cuts the little girl in me, the one who still needed protection, love, and support, no matter how smart she might have been. It cuts me in just as painful a way as a dull knife could, because of all the people I wanted to choose me, the only one who maybe should have didn't. At an age when I couldn't have possibly understood the complexity that was my father's alcoholism, when I desperately needed him to choose me, he just didn't, and all I would feel from him was rejected. The only message I would consistently receive from him was that I was not worth it. And that is the feeling that cuts me so deeply, the feeling that makes me cry bitter tears still; to my own father, I wasn't worth it.
Fuck.