It is an unavoidable fact of dealing with me that the more off-kilter, the more threatened, the less secure I feel the less able I am to be demanding. I think it is part of the reason that I end up with friends who are so intensely, demonstrably loyal. Anything short of that and I just walk away.

I feel shitty about the degree of mind reading I need from people. “I am fine” is the first sign that I am not ok. If I am having a medium-challenging time I will say “Oh man. I have so many good and bad feelings.” If I am actually having a good time it will be “This is awesome!” “Fine” means I am doing very very very poorly. If you don’t know that, well, it means that people feel surprised when they find out how badly I am doing.

I am fine right now. With all that entails.

There are times when my choke chain is the thing that makes me very secure. I know I am shiny enough for Noah. So shiny he doesn’t even want me to sparkle at anyone else and he doesn’t want to sparkle at someone else. I am enough.

It is very easy for me to feel slighted, disrespected, and unwanted. I don’t like that about myself. Most of the time I don’t take it very personally or act like it is an affront–it isn’t. Mostly I am fine with the fact that I’m not much of a “real person” in other people’s minds. I keep people out at arm’s length because I need it to be ok that they are slighting me and disrespecting me. I can tell myself that they don’t want me because they don’t particularly know me and I am not going to let them get to know me so it’s fine that it’s out at a distance.

Trusting people takes a lot. Believing that people value me is very hard. Mostly I assume that other people can’t value me more than I value myself and it’s all my own fault I am not loved more.

Not being shiny is so deeply tied to shit with my mother. I wish that I didn’t interpret the slightest whiff of “not that special” as I should disappear and leave. I wish that my brain didn’t fill in that beginning with, “You were born unwanted and unloved and you will die unwanted and unloved.” It is so hard to believe that anyone loves me. Less hard with Noah than with other people. But if his level of devotion is the bar then no, I won’t ever believe that someone else loves me.

Sometimes I wish that I hadn’t decided to have kids. I would be done by now. I wouldn’t have to keep hurting this way. I wouldn’t still feel in the pit of my stomach that of course I am not esteemed or valued–I am a worthless whore.

Establishing yourself in a new place means accepting rejection after rejection after rejection after rejection and I must keep a smile on my face. I must say that I am fine.

Is it a broken coping mechanism or an adaptive, necessary one?

I don’t know. But it is such a basic part of dealing with me that I am pretty stunned when people don’t understand it after a long time of knowing me. I feel like I write about this specific type of deceptiveness a great deal. If someone is close enough to care what I write about (the horrid slog that it often turns into) then how can they say that they had no idea that I would say that I am fine when I’m not fine? It’s a mystery.

It is also the reason I’ve been crying. I don’t feel seen. I don’t feel valued. I feel like discarded trash. I feel like there is no point in sharing vulnerability slowly, gently over a long time because when the rubber hits the road I am going to be roadkill. Because I am not willing to slap an intimate person hard when they are crossing a boundary. I do that with people who don’t matter.

Instead I will say I am fine. I will go to my room and I will cry as quietly as I am able. Eventually I will come out when the fact that I am being a lazy, worthless, broken tool and I am not doing enough labour to justify anyone continuing to have me in their lives overwhelms me.

In my brain the deal is: work or die. No one has any interest in maintaining a worthless bitch.