You say "I love you"
In my head I am asking "Why?!"
Instead I say "I love you too"
And I do. I really do.
I look back on the last year and wonder at how far I've come from where I was and how little acknowledgement I still don't give myself.
A year ago I was engulfed by my demons and couldn't even imagine a way out.
I am lying in your bed wrapped in your arms.
"I just wish the voices would stop. I'm so sad."
There is so much more I wish to say, to pull you into my self-hatred, my depression, begging you to pull me out so I don't have to, begging you to save me while I secretly dig myself deeper for the sake of something I don't even truly believe in anymore.
Instead I let you hold me. I pull you closer.
I ask myself what I am feeling, how to get through it. All that responds is an angry, insidious voice I've gotten to know all too well. A voice which just repeats the same boring horrible things over and over again. I am so tired of this voice.
I think about what I've been aspiring towards-- Trust, Freedom from Guilt and Envy, Compassion. I get angry because those concepts seem so distant in this moment, angry because their palpability comes and goes and doesn't seem to stay. Angry because I've been in therapy so long that introspection is almost more of a hinderance than a guide.
suddenly it dawns on me.
Maybe the person I can trust, if not myself, is you, them, those, who see me the way I've only glimpsed myself as. Maybe freedom from guilt can come as catharsis through the forgiveness of all these people who love me. Maybe, just maybe, for now I can see love for me in your eyes and have that be enough. Maybe, this time, I don't have to destroy your image of me because I can't reconcile it's existence with my convictions of what everyone else
should see me as.
Maybe, just maybe, it's time to start
seeing myself the way you see me instead of fighting to change your eyes. Maybe, just maybe, it's time to start letting go of my own skewed vision.
I am afraid, apathetic, judgmental, angry, depressed.
I am also loving, creative, thoughtful, brave, and beautiful.
I ruminate over my lying next to you. You couldn't say more to my words except that you love me no matter what.
Maybe it's time I start allowing that to be enough.
No more fighting against you about me and making my emotions the center of everyone's fears and worries. No more ruminating endlessly.
Maybe it's time I start trusting that every single person who loves me is wrong.
It is evening now. Dark. I am afraid to be alone with myself, afraid for you to leave, even more afraid of my inability to be alone. Afraid you've 'missed the point' or that you 'don't care', but that's the voice talking because we kiss and you ask me,
"Please try to be nice to yourself"
And in that tiny sentence, I know you understand and hear me as much as you are capable and that I deserve what you say. That being kind to myself isn't about just me, its about us, my family, life.
In that tiny sentence the voice finds faults--
'why would you?', 'he doesn't really care', 'he doesn't know you like I do'
In that single sentence I hear 'I love you for trying' and 'you matter to me'
and maybe, for now, the most powerful way I can be nice to myself,
is to see myself the way you do.
No more doubt, no more questioning, no more denying,
just acceptance, however insurmountable that may seem.
