You’re addicted to love.
That’s what I woke up to this morning. This song playing on loop in my head.
That all of my fear, roadblocks, what is standing in my way of true enlightenment, standing in the way of tapping into my intelligence and freedom from this pain… it was my desperation to be loved.
The suffering, longing and the passive aggressive fawning, FAKE personas I adopted were all because I was so desperate for love. I had an army of fake women living inside of me, ready to become something else. To become whatever I needed to become to get love.
Love from my parents, love from my friends, society… a man.
I scrambled and tied myself into knots because I was desperate to be loved. It’s in my DNA, my programming, deep in my being.
And I became several other people over the course of time, a different person for each circumstance. Just to fit in. Just to be loved.
I’m so scared people won’t like the real me. It seems like a cliche or something that actually doesn’t exist, but… it does! Fitting in, being liked, keeping the peace, making everyone feel GOOD in your presence… it’s a thing. It’s a full time job.
And the irony here is that you’ll never TRULY be loved if you aren’t your authentic self. They may like the character you are playing, but not you. The kicker here is, I was never really me. I was becoming who they wanted, not who I WAS.
And deep down, you know this.
So, if I can let that go. If I can be free of that…. I will master this life. Because I won’t be chasing ghosts, comfort and that soft place of being accepted no matter what. AND the real connections, the true love will come to me. Not this faux, surface level stuff that I want less of.
I just need to let GO.
p.s… I recognized this today because I’ve been self isolating SO HARD for months and as I emerge, things are changing. I walked into my hairdresser’s salon as my authentic, goofy, chatty, metaphor-talking happy-go-lucky self. I opened with a Pauly Shore reference and she looked at me like I had been smoking crack. And she was so fucking annoyed by me. She kept asking me if I had been drinking, she tried to walk away from me, she put another hair stylist on me (which she never does) and at first, it really hurt my feelings. Then I realized… oh, I had been someone else in her chair for the last 9 years. This is what this feels like. So, I will absolutely tone it down with her, but I did feel rejected, I felt hurt in that moment. But I see it all clearly now and I needed to feel this and witness this. I need to be uncomfortable that I won’t be totally embraced as the real me. And that’s ok. I’m not going to marry my hairdresser, I’m not moving in with her and having babies with her. But it was a great lesson.
p.s.s… I joined Hinge the other night. A dating app. Oh, good Lord what a mistake. It’s like looking at old dogs at the pound and wanting to take them all home, but you know better. It broke my heart. And the one man I talked to, I connected with him over what I thought was his sense of humor. So, we chatted for like 10 minutes on their texting thing. He was so condescending and so awful. At least I saw it, at least I recognized his utter misery. So, I deleted the app immediately after talking to this guy. Either I’m not ready or I want no part in this, no shade to anyone who has navigated it better than I have. It was a good lesson, though. That’s how I have to look at it. Because it was SO depressing to me but I wouldn’t have known unless I jumped in.
