Growing Up

I have to grow up now.

Wait, aren't you already an adult? You might ask...and I would say yes, technically I am. But according to Pia Mellody's books on Love Addicts/Codependents - and since I have accepted that I am a love addict/codependent - I didn't get the proper nurturing as a child and, thus, never learned the skills that each mature adult needs to make their way through this world in the healthiest way possible. She says codependence is a disease of a lack of maturity, or a disease of immaturity. I really am sick of all the crap associated with this disease...but ok, fine: I'm an immature, spineless piece of dog shit that needs to be smeered across the road...what? what? Am I reverting? Regressing? No, I'm just feeling a little defeated but it'll pass.

Let's just be honest here, shall we? (and by we I mean me and by honest I'm being redundant 'cause I'm always honest). I'm scared I'll fail at this again. I say again because I was in therapy for relationship issues about a decade ago up until I moved across the country almost six years ago. I thought I had made it through to the "other side" - that being the healthy side where I believed I was making healthy choices and capable of having a healthy, sustainable relationship. But obviously I wasn't quite there and I ended up slipping back into another unhealthy relationship.

I know I'm a bit obsessive about this problem/process, too. I also need a vacation and thankfully will be taking one soon. I have a headache. I have a heartache. I wake up 4/7 days a week feeling like something's missing - and by something I mean my entire reason to live. Ok that's f-ing dramatic! But sitting here, writing this, waiting to feel ok about leaving work without bringing too much attention to it, there is that empty feeling inside me like where can I even go that will feel good? Or just better than the way I feel right now. I'm tired of myself. I often feel like I could easily not exist and nobody would know for days (except maybe my co-workers)...or weeks, even.

I watch TV a lot because I live alone and it makes me feel like I'm not alone. One TV show I watch on occasion is "Bones" which is about a scientist woman, they call her Bones cause she's an anthropologist and knows a lot about bones, who investigates murders with this other guy, but the point of bringing her up is that she's nerdy and knows a lot of stuff so when she made some comment that "even an ordinary house-cat" would eat your dead body before it got cold, I was truly impressed by the thought. I looked over at my cats with new respect (and fear)...and thought to myself, yeah, I can see that - the one cat, Bates, likes to lick my nose and after several licks he invariably takes a chomp at it, trying to sink his long fangs into my skin. Sometimes he succeeds to some extent and I end up with a bloody nose - inside and out. Yeah, I doubt he'd even wait for me to be breathless.

Anyway, I think about what would happen if I just died suddenly, by myself in my apartment. And now I kinda know - my cats would eat me. I'm actually kinda glad 'cause at least they'd get fed and at least my body would go to use (although I'm also an organ donor), and maybe, (but probably not), there'd be less of a stench when someone did come to find, by happenstance, my dead body.

Yeah, growing up is about death. But I learned all about death when I was young. Been there done that. Now I need to grow myself up and I don't even know what I didn't learn from my parents as a child that I must now teach myself. That's why this is so difficult - it's the blind girl teaching herself how to read. I need to love the child that didn't get the love and attention she needed. I didn't know I didn't get the love and attention that I needed - I only knew that I wanted more. I need to truly feel that I am valuable and who I am is valuable even though I was told that who I was and wanted to be was not ok. Here I am referring specifically to my gender stuff - I always wanted to be more like a boy and I was always fighting to be that way because my mom and society wanted me to be more feminine. I just learned to accept that I was an ugly, unlovable boy-girl. I've long since realized that's not true, but I guess I haven't truly felt it. Because I still crave someone to tell me, to show me that they love me and think I'm somehow attractive - beautiful, even.

Sheesh, that made me cry. That hits home. Oh yeah, 'cause it is home - it's my life.

Well, I'm still trying to grow up. I never knew loving myself would be this hard.