A ribbon that won't strangle me.

A banal confession:

I've obsessed over and idealized men who did not want me, and their rejection was the one trait they all had in common. It was not love and I'm sure I knew that even while I was in the throes of it. I'm not shaming myself. It would be stupid to shame myself for something that almost everyone has done - Maybe not everyone has enacted this EXACT pattern, but they've at least flirted with a cousin of something in this arena.

It's a habit I've made enormous strides in erasing. I'm 30 and it was time. I've come to the conclusion that I should soak up the love from the well that already sits in the center of my life. Obviously it's one thing to know it is there, another to feel it. It's all in the elimination of distractions. If I feel shame for anything, it's that I neglected the people who truly SAW my love and my life and embraced me for it... the "me" and all that I came with. And it's not that I didn't love them all back. I just stopped bathing in that blessing.

I don't think I wanted some kind of mutual adoration as much as I wanted to be SEEN. Or maybe it was that I wanted a conclusion. A grounded place to lay. I don't know what the future holds, and that's scary. So I tell myself happy (or even neutrally) ending stories and make homes in people with termites in the walls and bring my own ghosts to turn it into a literally "creepy crawly" house of a relationship. SUPER.

I don't care as much about happy endings anymore. I just want to KNOW how my life will "turn out." But it's all in the NOW. I have to twist my fear of the unknown in gratitude that my life has been, and will continue to be, an exciting adventure. And it'll be ALL mine.

Sometimes I still think about that ending though. Someone to tie myself to, drift along with. Someone that will give me an ending tied up in a ribbon that won't strangle me.

My life story is wild and there are parts of it that don't even sound real, and I have tended to follow suit. Luckily I haven't out-crazied life itself. Can anyone?

And do the people who don't see you matter?

Probably not.