the best you can is not good enough
I know I posted just a couple of hours ago that there are a lot of good things going on in my life, but I have found myself sort of woeful nonetheless the last few days. The loneliness thing is kicking my ass again I think.
This time, I think, it's because I feel very aware that I am not tops on anyone's list. Not just that, but I've never been. I've never been that person whose company can trump everyone else's company, I've always been the kind of guy that can and has easily been shoved aside because someone else beckoned...or even just indicated that they possibly might beckon.
I try to talk about this with the people in my life -- or at least my friends -- but they just don't understand...and I don't really know how to describe it. I guess it might be best explained as a sort of grown up version of the jealousy that an older child has of his newborn sibling when all of a sudden the parent's attention is diverted away from him and lavished instead on the baby. I say grown-up version because I am capable of understanding why it is...but that doesn't really make it easier.
I understand that my Dad will put his wife before me in all but the most dire of circumstances and that is as it should be. I fully appreciate that my friends should put their boyfriends and girlfriends ahead of me too, as that is most appropriate as well, again in all but the most dire circumstances. But it kills me that nowhere out there is a friend to whom I am their single best friend for which everything can be set aside if I need someone to talk to, or just be around. It kills me that in every relationship that I have ever been (I speak of platonic relationships of course given the utter lack of romantic ones), there has always been someone else more important who can dash all plans and the like simply by raising their hand. This is loneliness at its most profound.
I feel the secondary and tertiary status of my existence on this earth with every beat of my heart and contraction of my lungs.
I want nothing more than to be number one. I desire only to be that person that is always tops on the mind of someone that I care about. It's something that I've never felt, never had the pleasure of feeling, always dreamed of. Twenty-seven years of prayers gone unanswered.
But the thing that makes the grown-up version of this jealousy so much worse than its juvenile cousin is that I am fully aware that it is me and my being that puts me in this spot...there is no one else to put the blame on as there is with a younger sibling. I am aware that my inability to garner the respect and indeed love of others is the result of some inner defect of who I am. My star cannot seem to shine as brightly as everyone else's does to somebody else.
And so I find myself in places like this one this night where I cannot help but question myself. Where I cannot help but feel that I am nothing. Where I cannot shake this feeling of utter, desparate loneliness. I find myself questioning everything, taking a mental inventory of every facet of my being, searching for that thing that makes me so unworthy of love and devotion. But I cannot find it.
It would be better, I think, if I knew what it was, but I don't. In not knowing, I find myself questioning everything...am I ugly? am I boring? am I selfish? am I too mean? am I too nice? am I too plain? too normal? too different? I ask these questions and to each I can only answer "I don't know". It's an uncertainty that rattles me to the very core of my personality, a deep-seeded lack of self-confidence...a reason to feel like a failure and a reason to hate myself.
But there I am. Always questioning and never finding answers. Always alone and incapable of being otherwise. It is depressing, it is demoralizing, and it leads to an empty, yet paradoxically heavy, heart.
This time, I think, it's because I feel very aware that I am not tops on anyone's list. Not just that, but I've never been. I've never been that person whose company can trump everyone else's company, I've always been the kind of guy that can and has easily been shoved aside because someone else beckoned...or even just indicated that they possibly might beckon.
I try to talk about this with the people in my life -- or at least my friends -- but they just don't understand...and I don't really know how to describe it. I guess it might be best explained as a sort of grown up version of the jealousy that an older child has of his newborn sibling when all of a sudden the parent's attention is diverted away from him and lavished instead on the baby. I say grown-up version because I am capable of understanding why it is...but that doesn't really make it easier.
I understand that my Dad will put his wife before me in all but the most dire of circumstances and that is as it should be. I fully appreciate that my friends should put their boyfriends and girlfriends ahead of me too, as that is most appropriate as well, again in all but the most dire circumstances. But it kills me that nowhere out there is a friend to whom I am their single best friend for which everything can be set aside if I need someone to talk to, or just be around. It kills me that in every relationship that I have ever been (I speak of platonic relationships of course given the utter lack of romantic ones), there has always been someone else more important who can dash all plans and the like simply by raising their hand. This is loneliness at its most profound.
I feel the secondary and tertiary status of my existence on this earth with every beat of my heart and contraction of my lungs.
I want nothing more than to be number one. I desire only to be that person that is always tops on the mind of someone that I care about. It's something that I've never felt, never had the pleasure of feeling, always dreamed of. Twenty-seven years of prayers gone unanswered.
But the thing that makes the grown-up version of this jealousy so much worse than its juvenile cousin is that I am fully aware that it is me and my being that puts me in this spot...there is no one else to put the blame on as there is with a younger sibling. I am aware that my inability to garner the respect and indeed love of others is the result of some inner defect of who I am. My star cannot seem to shine as brightly as everyone else's does to somebody else.
And so I find myself in places like this one this night where I cannot help but question myself. Where I cannot help but feel that I am nothing. Where I cannot shake this feeling of utter, desparate loneliness. I find myself questioning everything, taking a mental inventory of every facet of my being, searching for that thing that makes me so unworthy of love and devotion. But I cannot find it.
It would be better, I think, if I knew what it was, but I don't. In not knowing, I find myself questioning everything...am I ugly? am I boring? am I selfish? am I too mean? am I too nice? am I too plain? too normal? too different? I ask these questions and to each I can only answer "I don't know". It's an uncertainty that rattles me to the very core of my personality, a deep-seeded lack of self-confidence...a reason to feel like a failure and a reason to hate myself.
But there I am. Always questioning and never finding answers. Always alone and incapable of being otherwise. It is depressing, it is demoralizing, and it leads to an empty, yet paradoxically heavy, heart.
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