Reflecting on my life, I see a pattern when it comes to people. People I like, people I love, people I’ve tried too hard for… it feels like I try more for them. I try to make them like me and want to be friends/lovers with me. I’m seeking validation in possibly the wrong people. I want that comfort and security knowing somebody likes me and wants to stay with me in my life. So I overextend myself, I make myself available, I make myself ready for any moment that person may need me. But in the end, I’m the one who suffers because at the end of the day, I’m still empty. I’ve become void of my emotional resources because they’ve never been replenished by the same people I try so hard for… why? Because they simply don’t value me or my time enough to want to fill me up, too.

I’ve always had this notion that if people like me and want me, that I’ll be complete. Let me tell you, it’s INCREDIBLY difficult trying to erase that out of my brain. For year after year after year I was convinced I needed someone to survive. I’m 28 and still trying so hard to persuade myself that it isn’t the case. I don’t need anyone or anything to complete me, I am enough for myself. I’m still learning… and that’s so very difficult.

Then when those feelings aren’t matched, I become aware of my efforts and how the other person doesn’t try just as hard as I do. Of course, upon realizing that, I feel this empty bitterness that swells inside my heart. I feel little parts of my soul burn away and the ash burrows into the little cuts I’ve inflicted on my soul. That’s all this is, really… self-inflicted wounds I lay down in me, for risking my own emotions to pacify someone else––at least I think I’m pacifying them––when in reality they most likely don’t give a shit nearly as much as I do. I risk and risk, and risk, hoping for a different result… it’s usually not the case.

Am I really this lovesick? I have to talk myself down and scold me so I don’t keep making the same mistakes… because I’m intense. Because I love too hard. Because maybe I really am not good enough and I’ll never measure up (or down) to what someone typically wants or needs. They don’t expect such a tsunami of emotions to hit them and knock them over. Maybe they expect simple love. Am I capable of simple love? I never got much love growing up, maybe I’m compensating now for the lack of love I had. Maybe loving hard is the only way I know how to. I want the person I have feelings for, be it a friend or lover, to feel like they matter. They do matter very much, to me. I don’t want them to question or wonder if they are… I don’t want them to be like me, who always wondered if I mattered. I still wonder if I do.

My feelings have been pushed aside so much throughout my life that you think I’d take a hint and just lay them down and bury them for good. Sometimes I do, but it’s like they have their own pulse and they eventually rise 6 feet from underground and make themselves known that they are, in fact, very alive. I can’t hide them, I can’t change who I am. I try and try but in the end, this Amy is always there. I pour these feelings out and hand them my heart… but more often than not, my bleeding heart ends up being dropped into the dirt and left to bleed out in what turns to mud as the blood soaks the dirt up.

So what will become of my love? Will it just live inside me and never find another heart to beat with? Will my intense emotions just dance alone as they watch the world sway into the arms of the simple love that everyone seems to seek out? Will this fire in my heart burn out into the words I paint across the paper in my journal or onto the screen where I write these posts? Do I hide who I really am and just surrender to mediocre love?

I don’t want to apologize for who I am, but I feel like sometimes I have to because I’ll never be enough for anyone who comes my way. I lie awake at night wondering what tomorrow holds. I close my eyes and eventually drift away, but wake up with the same emptiness I’ve always desperately tried to escape from… so I smoke weed at night so that I’m numb and so my mind isn’t swirling with intrusive thoughts that keep me awake.

I should just come with a disclaimer: “Beware of emotions!”
Either that, or just lock my heart shut forever.

xoxo,