August

Maya Mayhem
Aug 31, 2018 · 9 min read

All the things I say to myself weekly daily hourly just on repeat over and over it never stops.

YOU’RE TOO MUCH. Stop bombarding everyone. Stop apologizing and then firing back up and stop being soooo much. You exhaust people. It’s no wonder everyone gets tired of you because you run around like a nut job on crack who doesn’t sleep and has a million ideas that never pan out and no one wants to listen to you anymore. Not everyone wants to answer your personal questions all the fucking time. Stop pushing. Stop prying and forcing and maybe just take it down a notch. Remember what he said? Too many opinions. You have too many opinions and ideas and you’re too 100 and you’re too all over the place and messy and decisive and you love too much and you lose everything and you feel things too intensely and you need to sleep more and learn how to breathe and maybe allow things to happen because guess what? You can’t control everything. Its no wonder everyone left. You pushed and you pushed until they all got tired of your shit and didn’t care that you got yourself together and wanted to decorate the house or make dinner, no one wanted you around anymore because you never stop fucking talking or asking or thinking out loud.

STOP. Oh my GOD JUST STOP. Nope. No one wants to hear your entire pathetic life story or listen to you have a conversation with yourself about the life cycle of bees or the distance between the planets or what you dreamt about last night and why it might be a clue into your psyche or how you and the cashier at the store got caught up talking about Harry Potter and definitely no one wants to hear about how many dogs you met that day or how many times you ran into a door or tripped over your feet and no one wants you correcting them all the time or pretending to be tough when really you’re a terrified little girl who is constantly and poorly grasping at straws trying to make shit work when it was really just broken from the beginning. No one wants your trauma. Your baggage. You carry that shit around and hold it so close to your chest that no one can ever fully reach inside. Keep everyone at arms length. Everything is intense. Up and down. Emotional. Dramatic. Girl you are SO much drama you’re a hurricane in your head at all times it’s amazing you even have friends and how can anyone keep up with you?

I can still hear you rattling things off and keeping score and I can feel your hands shake the moment you wake up. There is no balance. You need balance. People want consistency and you can’t keep your shit together for more than a few hours. It’s no wonder you exhaust everyone.

Eat your veggies. Allow people to be nice to you. Remember when your mom said that you have a weird problem of hating people who give you attention? She told you that people like being around you and to stop punishing them for it. Maybe you should like yourself a little more each day. Make room for nice things in your life because you’re a kind person who has done bad things but you’re not a bad person.

Drink more water. Smile at yourself more instead of shrugging. Organize your house. Accept that things are this way and this is exactly how it was supposed to be, and maybe it feels disappointing because it’s pretty far from where you thought it was going to end up, I mean lets be real, did you really think you would be settled down by now? You still have plenty of time to work hard and make changes.

You’re not getting old.

I FEEL LIKE I FELL BEHIND.

Everyone is getting married and having babies and I don’t even have a credit card and I still can’t wear anything white because I spill everything I eat or drink and I still regularly knock shit down when I talk because my hands go everywhere and it takes me 100 tries to get something right and just like he said I definitely do things in a roundabout way, or did he say that when other people move in a straight line I see things from a million angles and I make 10 moves when it should be just one and he couldn’t follow me anymore. Too confusing, too all over the place, too many distractions. I make it up as I go along and eventually I get to the same destination but the way there is just a little messy. More than a little. It’s a whole ball of ideas and voices and plans and to me it makes sense when I step back and look at it but to other people it seems like a disaster. But when things are calm and normal I get nervous and scared because I’m waiting for it all to go to shit and I’m waiting for the mess to clean up and to be left alone and for the sadness to hit.

I’ll never be that kid. That guy. I’ll never be that one. I don’t even get it right on the 20th chance that I’m currently banking on and I’m running out of patience from other people, desperately trying to mend fences build bridges and repair broken bones hearts souls hands and BOUNDARIES.

I’m just one big fucking 14 year old emo song kid with ripped jeans and black tights going to screen printing class with my eyeliner and shitty attitude.

But then I think, WHY

Why do I spend so much time thinking negatively about myself? Why do I believe these are all negative things? Because some stupid boy told me they were? He told me all these things and then he disappeared and erased himself from the world and acts like I am the worst human in existence like I was the one that destroyed things and maybe I did but I didn’t do it on purpose it’s just that things tend to go up in flames when I’m involved and I’m sorry. Sorry for all the things I didn’t do and all the things I couldn’t get right. And I’m not even holding onto those feelings anymore it’s just disappointing when someone says they believe in you and then you finally get it right and suddenly they don’t anymore. It makes the future a scary place.

I have people tell me nice things and I don’t believe them the way I believe the 29 years of being told bad stuff.

Rotten to my core. Unchangeable. You’ll always be broken. The mantra I hear on repeat every single moment of the day. My biggest fear. That my insides are forever dark and shattered and sharp. Forever damaged goods. People joke about it but it’s true it’s true it’s true why does it feel so true.

Maybe I will. Maybe I will always be a little fired up about something and a little upset. And my emotions will forever pour over and onto the people in my life, and those that love me will love me regardless. And they won’t be frightened or turned off or unsure. Never unsure. They won’t tell me I am a mess. They won’t tell me that they can “handle me” just fine or that I’m always a disaster.

It’s okay to feel things. To love things. To be sad about the things that have been lost or broken or stolen. It’s okay to be off track or unbalanced and it’s okay to feel unhappy sometimes.

I’ve never stopped believing that things could even out. I still have a goal of becoming less intense and more productive. Of calming myself quicker and not acting on my impulses. Exercising my ability to choose how I react, how I experience other people’s words and intentions, how I experience myself in the world, and how I speak to myself.

But never for a second do I have any intention of losing the tornados and the fires and the floods of how I live. The forever burning desire to grasp for more in my life, to never stop learning and giving with everything I have and loving people all the way until it breaks me over and over. I’ll tear myself apart for it because I’m not afraid of loving things with my whole heart and body and not afraid of never giving up and throwing myself into everything I do with everything I have because I can’t just kinda sorta try something out. I’m all in all of the time.

My mind is reeling tonight. Blues and reds. So many things I don’t know about. So many stories.

I’m glad I never got it right. I’m still working through mountains of regret and so much shame sometimes it’s suffocating, but in the end when I go to bed, I feel lighter. I feel okay. And that’s miles from where I was years ago.

I may never be settled. I may never marry or have a set plan or a house to take care of or a life that is wonderful and boring and ordinary and things might just always be up in the air. I may never have kids and maybe I’ll get more cats or maybe I won’t and in 5 years time I’ll be traveling the world. I may lock onto things for too long or feel weird when nothing is weird at all but it’s just my mind being strange and feeling uncomfortable. Being okay with never knowing. Anything can happen, good or bad, and it all depends on how I look at it. I’m sure tomorrow I’ll feel differently about everything and that’s okay too.

I am open and willing to change. That’s the difference between who I was and who I am now. I am willing and eager to learn more about how my brain works, why sometimes it doesn’t work the way I want it to, why it makes me think certain things or do certain things. I’m brave enough to open those boxes and deal with what’s inside. Ive carried it for so long and I’m not broken from it. I’m not too much or too little. I’m not crazy because I want someone to speak to me with truth and to give me real words and to follow through. To just fucking be there. To not be overwhelmed. To know that I really do have the ability to sit still, to be silent, to listen. It just takes time. Patience. Small moments. It’s not asking too much.

And so this is how it goes. The back and forth. The two sides of me arguing with each other every moment. Fighting constantly, never forgetting, forever remembering every single word that was said and yelled and screamed into my head. Every sad and disappointed look in my direction, the weighted feeling of never being enough of the good stuff and being too much of the wrong thing all at once, of being so fully unloveable and cracked, never being the one for anybody and always being that other girl.

Because at the end of the day, that’s where this all comes from right? I wanted to be a lovable child, desperate for my parents attention amongst a childhood full of loud noises and death and sadness and so much open space. To be a lovable sibling forever following my brothers around wishing they thought I was cool. To be a good friend. Student. Partner. Human. Denied and defensive. Being alone is easier than continuing to come to the realization that I may never be fully lovable in the endless magical way that people are capable of loving someone. It’ll always be an almost, not quite, forever a big old fat maybe. I could do without ever hearing that again but it might just be the truth because I’m not the kind of person who people love all the way and that’s fine. I can love myself enough and love other people for small moments and that can be it.

The only constant that I can hold on to is that I am happier now than I was before. The weight was lifted the moment it all broke. Exactly a year ago. When I finally broke, and allowed myself to feel a sadness so great it swallowed me whole and woke me up and turned itself into a happiness that can only be fueled by myself. And this entire year I have spent learning how to manage that happiness so it can grow and expand and continue to inhale/exhale new beginnings and beautiful things and I can become this forever reaching person, completely sure of my choices and my feelings, saying YES and meaning it, laughing and meaning it, saying I love you and meaning it, smiling and being still.

I am happy sad. All of the things. All of the time.

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