Sometimes I feel undateable.
Sometimes I feel undateable.
"Undateable."
One of those leftover words from that time when my mind short-circuited from pain, and spewed those tar soaked words all day long.
Those tar soaked words filled the crevices of my brain and my heart and leaked out of my eyes at night.
Those words came from a story my mind was writing without me.
In front of me, reality was happening. I was thirteen coming home every night to a big beautiful house that was completely empty. My father had left without a word, with only a few boxes showing he had ever been there at all. My mother and I crossed paths infrequently and when we did she was a shadow of the person I remembered. My brother had left to college. By the time I was sixteen I was sleeping on friends couches or in my car when I was too ashamed to ask for safe shelter. These were the facts. The facts were that these were just people doing the best they could with where they were at the time. Maybe it wasn't good enough, but it was their best, and it most importantly it wasn't my fault.
It wasn't my fault.
But the silent author inside me wrote a different story. One where I had caused this. Where the fault I truly found in my family was in myself. It was my own deficiencies that had caused it. If I hadn't been too stupid and unloveable and fat and ugly, maybe my dad would call and my mom would remember how to smile and my brother could sleep at night without worrying. I ached to feel unconditional love, but it all felt conditional. And I had failed to live up to love's conditions. I didn't meet it's high standards.
That feeling of unworthiness led to me constantly trying to prove my worth. It's as if deep down I knew it wasn't true that I was undeserving, but I felt I had to prove it.
Men became the source of that validation. And as I realized my own physical presence as a sexual being, I felt as if I had figured it out the ultimate shortcut to validation. Feeling desired served as a lovely bandaid to feeing loved, respected, and honored. It still does. Love takes time, but desire is an involuntary reaction. So I chose the men that desired me over the ones that wanted to take the time to get to know me. The ones who could have truly loved me.
I created my own reality. I proved something to myself for sure, just like I had planned. But it wasn't my worth. I was manifesting my insecurities.
I handed my heart over begging for it to be healed, but I didn't hand it to a healer, I handed it to those who only wanted to handle me. And the wounds ran deeper. The tar thicker.
As I've learned to rewrite my story. I've cleaned out the trenches and light has come back in. I've begun to see my parents for what they are, as humans and not God's. I've never felt more love or understanding for my family than I do today. I love them SO much.
I see myself for what I am, both a grown woman and a small child.
A child who has known neglect and abandonment and misuse of many kinds, who has made wrong choices not knowing where to turn. Who relied on instincts alone. Survival instincts.
And a grown woman who is full of empathy, kindness, and a desire to fully love. Who has shown great strength of character to always course correct, when I would have every justification to be as selfish and cruel as I've been treated.
But I'm not. I've always chosen to love.
And there is that desire to love we speak of. The desire to have my own family. The desire to show up every day and speak kind words and stand by the bad days and wake up every day to see love, give love, receive love.
That intention has shaped me into the person I am today. It has kept my heart warm, more than another's body ever could. Even though that intention has been born from pure blind faith.
When I feel as if I've been unfaithful, I remind myself of the faith I've had to have to believe in a life I've only read about in books and seen in movies. To believe enough to become a woman capable of it. A woman fully capable of love.
But i'll have moments where I see that future as truly possible, within my grasp. I step from blind faith to actual belief.
In those moments, the word "undateable" returns.
When I start to feel that love, and see the possibility of receiving it, fear returns. The tar trickles in.
I think of the mistakes I've made. The times I've been told I was too slutty to ever deserve a good guy. Too immodest. Too sensual.
I think of the loneliness I've felt. Nights spent alone when most people were eating dinner with their family. Nights spent alone in a hospital in excruciating pain, a time when no one should ever have to be alone, but I was.
And I feel completely undateable.
My walls come up and I push people away, proving to myself how undateable I truly am.
And I create that reality for myself.
The silent author strikes again, writing the ending that I feared most, as if it hurts less because I'm the one who wrote it.
And I realize, that as much as I've grown and changed and healed and learned to love and forgive. There is only so much that self love can do, but if self love can only do one thing for myself, it is to learn from my mistakes and to hand my heart over to my healer.
To try to see God for what he is. Not as human, but as God. To trust in an unseen unconditional love. And to have faith that my brokenness is a story, a lie, written by a silent author.
And in handing my heart to my healer; my pen to my savior; He will rewrite my endings and cross out the silent author's chapters where happily ever after wasn't possible.
He will turn undateable into unbroken.
Unbroken into unconditional.
And the last word,
on the last page.
will be