I feel like I got confirmation today that I just don’t belong. I knew there was something wrong with me. Some hideous abnormality lurking beneath the surface. I wanted to wring the entire world in my hands – twist the planet round and round until all the pain and injustice leaked from it. I wanted to cleanse my soul of the mental torture I had allowed myself to both mete out and endure. I am my own prisoner – a hostage of a world I created to escape the hand I’ve been dealt.
I have grown up watching the world go by – observing others find love and happiness among each other. In my 29 years I have never known this kind of belonging. I am female, heterosexual, intelligent, thoughtful, ambitious, kind and even funny sometimes. I’m obviously well spoken, I’m not terribly unattractive and I like a good Netflix binge just as much as anyone else. I’m normal. I’m what you would call a normal girl. Yet I’m lonely. I’ve never been on a date. I’ve not been kissed or courted or even looked at. I dress nicely, I wear makeup and I carry myself with some measure of grace and dignity. I’ve put myself out there in many ways, many different times and there is simply no interest.
Because I am candid and because I maintain some small, festering glimmer of hope – I have told this worry to the people in my life. Mostly I have been told that life and love are a mirror – if you do not love yourself then the world will not love you. The secret, I’m told so often, is to emulate and even radiate what you would like to see in others. Have I not loved? Have I not stared in the mirror long enough to see someone pretty? Someone worthy? The fact is I have. I have loved myself deeply before and this never, not once, translated into anything reciprocal.
I have been told that I do not need a man. That there is no reason I should believe I cannot or should not live without a companion. Is love not the greatest truth? I recognize on some vaguely intellectual level that I do not need a man to function or think or to pump blood through my veins. But all of us, everyone, is a sentient creature. We are programmed to require understanding and community. Evolution has prepped us to find love so that we may facilitate reproduction – the continuity of all life on earth. Not only have I failed to find the love necessary to bear this legacy but I have failed on a biological level.
As if I need any more proof of my failure – my doctor told me today that I will probably not be capable of bearing children. Not that I ever had the chance – I suppose that’s why it seems so unfair. I never had the opportunity to discover anyone willing to reproduce with me. Perhaps on some biological level, men have avoided me because they can sense this failure. I just don’t belong with other people – emotionally or physically. Dear World, is anyone out there?
2 comments
Your writing resonated with me, although in a conjugate sense as I am male. I have never been fortunate to be in a relationship boat with a female and passing a quarter century and couple years in age, love has only become sequestered in some kind of riddle. Your words convey a beauty from within, particuarily the notion of love as truth and understanding. Even in nature one observes love in electromagnetic field quantities inducing each other to sustain their propogation through time. To long to belong to such a mystery of duality is despairing at times and it feels akin to your last question in solitude, almost rhetorical. But rest assured that you are not alone. If it is not weird to say, but you have my love and deep respect for expressing these kind of thoughts and feelings. I really do hope that you find the love which you deserve.
I was about to say the same thing!
Your post resonates with me as well. And I’m not normal. Never have been. I don’t know what it’s like to be an acceptable weight and size because I was considered fat and ugly from preschool on. I ended up becoming disabled as an adult which caused most of the weight I carry now. I was never a girly girl either. I was a tomboy all my life then at the end of 2010 I was told about being transgender and it’s something I jumped at. I had my name changed in 2012 and started taking testosterone in 2014. I’m 38 now. And I’ve had to come to terms with the fact that being fat, attracted to men, and transgender means I truly never will know what it’s like to be loved. I always felt like the outsider watching the rest of the world have happy, normal lives too. I so hear every word you’ve said.
Honestly, I think what people mean when they say “you have to love yourself first” really means you have to be self-centered and self-obsessed. Because look, look at the people who have the most friends, get the most dates, and have the easiest time finding relationships — they’re completely and utterly stuck on themselves, what they look like, and how much more popular & accepted they would be if they date/bang/get to marry a certain person. People don’t ever grow up. They have that middle school-high school mentality their entire lives. Men all have to have a super hot (aka super slut) girl and will accept nothing less. And the sluts will keep moving on until they land the one that makes them the most popular (aka envied) and/or has the most money, though money really is secondary to popularity, recognition, and making loads of other women jealous. Everyone is out for themselves and that’s why love doesn’t exist. Then they turn it around and try to guilt US for not being down on their selfish idiot level. -SIGH-
*virtual hugs* I hear ya. 🙁