Valentine.
(I originally wrote this on December 16th in what was then a private Tumblr blog I used while isolating and off of social media.)
I have so much love and loyalty and compassion and care to give. It’s the only surplus resource I have and, I thought, the only asset of value I had to my name. For so long I thought this was a gift, and I couldn’t wait to share all of it with people I felt were special enough to deserve it. I also desperately wanted some in return, because I certainly didn’t get much of it as a child from the people I was supposed to be able to most reliably expect it from. In just about every way, my life has been guided by and encouraged by love, whether it be romantic love from a partner, companionship with a close friend, or the love of art and for justice.
It’s been a very traumatic and devastating journey to where I am today: to gradually realizing that the amount of love in me is actually too much of a good thing, a dangerous overabundance of something we all need, like cholesterol or white blood cells or sugar; to concluding that love in general, especially in this capacity, is antiquated, obsolete, dead currency, a niche commodity; to discovering my particular propensity for love, compassion, and loyalty is nothing more than another unpalatable symptom, side effect, and weakness of my mental illness and history of trauma; to understanding that, despite lifelong sobriety, love was an all-consuming addiction that has slowly eaten away at my faculties, and that I desperately, urgently need to get clean and rehabilitated before it kills me; to learning that my dedication to love and truth, my unshakable honesty, how passionate a person I am about all that I am interested in and care about, my tendency to be openly vulnerable and the compassion and patience that has come with it all, have never been strengths, but have actually been impediments, deficiencies, weaknesses; to having demonstrated to me time and time again that all of these parts of myself I took pride in and considered almost superpowers were actually like dousing myself in gasoline and only dating lit matches, or painting a big bullseye on my back, or bleeding in a swarm of mosquitoes.
Nobody will ever need me as much as I need them, nor will they ever be capable of reciprocating what I offer to them if I decide they are important to me. And I think this year I’m really coming to terms with and seeing exactly why that is. It’s neither my fault nor anyone else’s, and I think I’m finding peace in it with time. The reality, I think, is that my childhood fucked me up for life, compounded by intergenerational trauma and poverty. A lot of the things a child needs from their parents growing up were not provided to me, and even more things a child should never have to experience happened regularly. I’ve known for a long time that this has left a cavernous, gaping void inside of me; an area of puzzle with missing pieces. It took a number of years vaguely knowing there was something wrong, something different, about me and the way I thought and felt things, but it wasn’t until adulthood that I began to see how I tried to fill that void with other people who were not big enough to fill the space, nor the right shape to complete that puzzle. I haven’t had many concrete goals or pursuits in my life, but I have always persisted in trying to fill and complete myself with someone else; to overcompensate for the lack of love I received during crucial developmental years by trying to find someone willing to give me an exaggerated version of what I thought love was or needed to be.
What resulted was a sad little boy in a grown man’s body who was desperate to feel maternal care and love and wound up a scared, insecure, needy, clingy, impossible mess that many people would feel up to task to clean but would always ultimately give up on because they’d eventually realize they could never give me what I needed to become the vision of “fixed” and “healed” that they wanted. While my damage has definitely predisposed me to being drawn toward other broken people, most of whom dealt with their own problems by being cruel and exploitative much like my parents did, I see now that even genuinely decent people would inevitably give up on me, because what I want and need from others, even if understandable, just clearly isn’t reasonable. I’m simply asking too much out of my partners and friends; I need more than they can give. No one person will ever be big enough to occupy this deep and dark a cave, and even if they’re big enough, they will still never be able to contort and stuff themselves into the misshapen space left empty by the pieces that have been missing since I was born. Part of me feels guilty for having ever imposed such pressure and responsibility on anyone I’ve ever cared about.
I really didn’t understand until recently how unrealistic my expectations in love and reciprocity were, though, because all I knew was what I was personally capable of giving others. If I could provide the amount of love, passion, loyalty, and support I knew I could, I felt it fair to believe most others were also capable and willing, and to expect mutuality at one point or another from who would clearly be the “right” person. Lately, I’ve been thinking of those things as a tangible supply of resources of which I have a surplus--pretty much the only category in which I am not so destitute. Other people are born with these resources in varying quantities, but even those who may share comparable supply to me at the very least differ in how they distribute it. I tend to give my all to one person, oftentimes because I wind up only really having that one person, while most others at least have their family members, close friends they’ve known for years, et cetera. I think that my childhood and all it was missing not only left me with this emptiness, but also with less individuals to distribute my love amongst. While the others I have been with, assuming they all did in fact have these things within them (I’m open to the reality that a few may very well have not), not only had multiple people to give their love and to receive some in return from, I did not--most specifically, I did not have parents, or much of any extended family, and my closest friends I considered my family have either decided they hate me or have moved far away from me in the last couple of years.
I’ll always be too much or not enough; too much in that, with my unparalleled love and adoration, will come overwhelming and sometimes suffocating clinginess and neediness, and not enough in that, as my brother said earlier tonight, “love can’t pay the bills.” What I want and need from others is unattainable, and unfair of me to expect or request. These things I thought were special about me are actually repellant flaws that others only want, at best, as a unique experience and fleeting novelty. The void within me cannot ever be properly filled, and my puzzle will remain incomplete. I am irreparably damaged and there is nothing beautiful about it. Love for me is an intoxicating cocktail of oxytocin and cortisol, and I do not know how to love responsibly. If I want any hope of finding someone to spend the long-term with in some intimate and significant way, it would require them to stretch themselves too thin or for me to dial myself down, either of which would kill us both slowly, and are scenarios I’d prefer being alone over. I don’t want loving and caring about me to be a burden, and I don’t want loving others to be as scary as it has become for me, but it is and always will be. I have to stop looking for what isn’t possible.
While I no longer judge myself harshly for who I am and what I need, I think I understand it in a way I never have before, and I accept it for what it is. It isn’t my fault that I am damaged, and it is not my fault others have taken me for granted, taken advantage of me, or sadistically preyed on me for my vulnerabilities. I accept myself for all of my broken parts, but this offers me little solace because I also must accept what being who I am means for my future. Giving up on love leaves me with nothing left to strive for.
I have so much love and loyalty and compassion and care to give. It’s the only surplus resource I have and, I thought, the only asset of value I had to my name. For so long I thought this was a gift, and I couldn’t wait to share all of it with people I felt were special enough to deserve it. I also desperately wanted some in return, because I certainly didn’t get much of it as a child from the people I was supposed to be able to most reliably expect it from. In just about every way, my life has been guided by and encouraged by love, whether it be romantic love from a partner, companionship with a close friend, or the love of art and for justice.
It’s been a very traumatic and devastating journey to where I am today: to gradually realizing that the amount of love in me is actually too much of a good thing, a dangerous overabundance of something we all need, like cholesterol or white blood cells or sugar; to concluding that love in general, especially in this capacity, is antiquated, obsolete, dead currency, a niche commodity; to discovering my particular propensity for love, compassion, and loyalty is nothing more than another unpalatable symptom, side effect, and weakness of my mental illness and history of trauma; to understanding that, despite lifelong sobriety, love was an all-consuming addiction that has slowly eaten away at my faculties, and that I desperately, urgently need to get clean and rehabilitated before it kills me; to learning that my dedication to love and truth, my unshakable honesty, how passionate a person I am about all that I am interested in and care about, my tendency to be openly vulnerable and the compassion and patience that has come with it all, have never been strengths, but have actually been impediments, deficiencies, weaknesses; to having demonstrated to me time and time again that all of these parts of myself I took pride in and considered almost superpowers were actually like dousing myself in gasoline and only dating lit matches, or painting a big bullseye on my back, or bleeding in a swarm of mosquitoes.
Nobody will ever need me as much as I need them, nor will they ever be capable of reciprocating what I offer to them if I decide they are important to me. And I think this year I’m really coming to terms with and seeing exactly why that is. It’s neither my fault nor anyone else’s, and I think I’m finding peace in it with time. The reality, I think, is that my childhood fucked me up for life, compounded by intergenerational trauma and poverty. A lot of the things a child needs from their parents growing up were not provided to me, and even more things a child should never have to experience happened regularly. I’ve known for a long time that this has left a cavernous, gaping void inside of me; an area of puzzle with missing pieces. It took a number of years vaguely knowing there was something wrong, something different, about me and the way I thought and felt things, but it wasn’t until adulthood that I began to see how I tried to fill that void with other people who were not big enough to fill the space, nor the right shape to complete that puzzle. I haven’t had many concrete goals or pursuits in my life, but I have always persisted in trying to fill and complete myself with someone else; to overcompensate for the lack of love I received during crucial developmental years by trying to find someone willing to give me an exaggerated version of what I thought love was or needed to be.
What resulted was a sad little boy in a grown man’s body who was desperate to feel maternal care and love and wound up a scared, insecure, needy, clingy, impossible mess that many people would feel up to task to clean but would always ultimately give up on because they’d eventually realize they could never give me what I needed to become the vision of “fixed” and “healed” that they wanted. While my damage has definitely predisposed me to being drawn toward other broken people, most of whom dealt with their own problems by being cruel and exploitative much like my parents did, I see now that even genuinely decent people would inevitably give up on me, because what I want and need from others, even if understandable, just clearly isn’t reasonable. I’m simply asking too much out of my partners and friends; I need more than they can give. No one person will ever be big enough to occupy this deep and dark a cave, and even if they’re big enough, they will still never be able to contort and stuff themselves into the misshapen space left empty by the pieces that have been missing since I was born. Part of me feels guilty for having ever imposed such pressure and responsibility on anyone I’ve ever cared about.
I really didn’t understand until recently how unrealistic my expectations in love and reciprocity were, though, because all I knew was what I was personally capable of giving others. If I could provide the amount of love, passion, loyalty, and support I knew I could, I felt it fair to believe most others were also capable and willing, and to expect mutuality at one point or another from who would clearly be the “right” person. Lately, I’ve been thinking of those things as a tangible supply of resources of which I have a surplus--pretty much the only category in which I am not so destitute. Other people are born with these resources in varying quantities, but even those who may share comparable supply to me at the very least differ in how they distribute it. I tend to give my all to one person, oftentimes because I wind up only really having that one person, while most others at least have their family members, close friends they’ve known for years, et cetera. I think that my childhood and all it was missing not only left me with this emptiness, but also with less individuals to distribute my love amongst. While the others I have been with, assuming they all did in fact have these things within them (I’m open to the reality that a few may very well have not), not only had multiple people to give their love and to receive some in return from, I did not--most specifically, I did not have parents, or much of any extended family, and my closest friends I considered my family have either decided they hate me or have moved far away from me in the last couple of years.
I’ll always be too much or not enough; too much in that, with my unparalleled love and adoration, will come overwhelming and sometimes suffocating clinginess and neediness, and not enough in that, as my brother said earlier tonight, “love can’t pay the bills.” What I want and need from others is unattainable, and unfair of me to expect or request. These things I thought were special about me are actually repellant flaws that others only want, at best, as a unique experience and fleeting novelty. The void within me cannot ever be properly filled, and my puzzle will remain incomplete. I am irreparably damaged and there is nothing beautiful about it. Love for me is an intoxicating cocktail of oxytocin and cortisol, and I do not know how to love responsibly. If I want any hope of finding someone to spend the long-term with in some intimate and significant way, it would require them to stretch themselves too thin or for me to dial myself down, either of which would kill us both slowly, and are scenarios I’d prefer being alone over. I don’t want loving and caring about me to be a burden, and I don’t want loving others to be as scary as it has become for me, but it is and always will be. I have to stop looking for what isn’t possible.
While I no longer judge myself harshly for who I am and what I need, I think I understand it in a way I never have before, and I accept it for what it is. It isn’t my fault that I am damaged, and it is not my fault others have taken me for granted, taken advantage of me, or sadistically preyed on me for my vulnerabilities. I accept myself for all of my broken parts, but this offers me little solace because I also must accept what being who I am means for my future. Giving up on love leaves me with nothing left to strive for.