Becoming, Lucy

Anger has been running my life recently, and I have been trying to figure out why. Or rather, intellectualise the anger to try ‘fix’ it. I tried talking it out when I first noticed it (to myself – practical, I know), but I thought if I could explain why I was angry then maybe I’d just stop feeling angry. Genius, right?

But of course, that didn’t work. I kept talking myself into circles which included a lot of ‘I don’t know’s’ and explaining – for some reason – that maybe it could be loneliness even though I am not actually lonely. I thought maybe I had found the trigger but until I actually understood why the trigger started a catastrophe, I stayed angry. No one likes to be angry and I especially don’t – it isn’t ‘natural’ to me (yeah, yeah, it’s a normal human emotion, blah blah). I had been doing good, really good in fact, then life and my wonderful ‘don’t give straight answers’ brain decided ‘good’ had been happening for too long.

So I was a good little therapy goer, and stopped trying to figure out why I was angry; instead I listened to what my anger needed. Well… Haha, the list that came out of me was eye-opening. It showed me I was tired – mum burnout, but it also showed me that I was actually lonely. It showed me I had been alone inside my own head for a long time.

I’m not lonely in the sense of ‘I need company’ but rather I lack a person or people that see and understand me. I also felt lacking in the department of feeling chosen and loved. The extensive list of things my anger needed to stop being anger brought to light that I am truly tired of carrying everything alone.

There’s a problem though. A lovely contradiction. Contradictions are where I spend my life, did you know? I want to be known but when somebody could have an opportunity to know me, I retreat. I see it happening in real time too, that’s what makes it worse. I am consciously aware of not letting anyone see me. Because visibility gives people too much information to form an opinion of me, right? That’s what my lovely brain, and maybe even my heart, believe.

It’s multiple things that hold me back from letting someone see it all. By all, I mean the thousands of threads pulling every single thought I have together, making them all interconnected. I don’t want someone to misunderstand because then I have to explain myself and I usually don’t have the words that make my ‘stuff’ make sense so then they get frustrated, I get frustrated and I end up wishing I never mentioned anything. Or worse, they don’t care to hear it… I could be met with a less than enthusiastic response. Or even worse, my thoughts could make them see me differently, resulting in them treating me differently. Or, (you still with me?), they could use it against me in the future.

I am really good at shutting myself down before someone else can.

I don’t want to show someone something, a part of me, and they suddenly decide I was never worth the effort in the first place.

It’s a nice little recipe of reasons, right?

Imagine desperately wanting someone to understand you, but being too terrified of what could happen if they do.

Consequently, I am stuck in this state of partial visibility. I filter my thoughts – each one goes through a rigorous ‘Lucy quality check’ before they’re presented. The only thoughts that leave my brain are fully formed and intellectual. Because if someone doesn’t fully know me, they cannot fully reject me. I can dismiss their rejection. I can say to myself “well they never fully knew me anyway, so it doesn’t matter.” I find relief in making myself smaller before someone else can.

I am stuck in a cycle that preserves the loneliness I was angry about.

Which sucks.

I can be okay with being by myself, with being alone but, unfortunately, I’m still human. I long for someone to choose me as their weird little life partner. Not even a life partner – I long for someone, a place, a relationship where I can just exhale and I don’t have to run my thoughts through a quality check.

I really wish I could turn around and say the next person that gets the opportunity to really know me, I won’t filter myself or find a reason not to share but I can’t.

This was never an optimistic blog anyway x