A.E. Janes

It's interesting, the situation. I showed up to see a friend who I'd been avoiding seeing purely out of guilt. I ate plain chips with said-former-guilt-inducing-pal, and recalled how I handled a very difficult situation. My friends tried to prepare me to handle it with grace like I asked them to, but the three of us know that's not a quality I possess quite yet.

On my drive home and while I laid in bed after, I wondered if not being good enough had anything to do with genetics. When I was in high school my mother bought pretty lingerie (which I was terrified to find) and I assume she fucked my father all day while my brother and I were at school. I assume she did this to try and make him admire her again. Every time I feel comfortable, I stop being enough, or as my mother told me, I become a particular breed of person that's kind of distasteful to the general population. I realize how this sounds. I don't see myself as a victim of circumstance but rather a doer of poor choices. 

Unfortunately, I lack the one thing my mother has which is a good poker face. I wish I could snoop with her same impassiveness. I never could with anyone. When I was a teenager, I would log into my father's iPad and laptop and sift through things very strategically. I could do a very thorough run-through of either device in under twenty minutes, no traces. I wanted to make sure he wasn't cheating on my poor mother again. If he was, I could save her and she would love me again. Nobody in my family seems to remember he cheated but me. I don't think I've admitted to anyone that I did that at one point in time (snooped), every week or so, for many years.

In a similar vein, I have gone through the devices of any untrustworthy boy that's gotten kind of close to me. I am very suspicious by nature and when given a reason, I suppose I set aside my typical moral code and decide certain things have to be done for the greater good (my personal ego and dignity). In high school I'd get information from friends in the form of screenshots; now, I know passwords and things like that and I can see what is going on in a lot more detail. Kind of. As much as I can handle. Again, the grace and poker face would all really come in handy if I am to continue making these poor decisions when deciding who to let love me. 

I came clean. I told my friends how I found things on a phone which belonged to someone I was seeing, the type of things which at thirteen I imagined finding on my father's laptop. My friend held his head in his hands and pulled his baseball cap down and asked me how bad it was. He asked me what I was going to do. I told him I'd found texts to an ex who I knew had never really gone away, who I have been competing with for almost three years; that there were pictures of other girls who looked like dumber versions of me that he thought about in the way he used to think of me. I admitted that I knew I was a rebound, because what else am I supposed to think when it's been two and a half years and my boyfriend-who-opened-the-relationship-without-me-knowing is still telling his ex he misses her, all the while expecting me to have the self-esteem to be confident that I am interesting enough to earn consistent respect or love for that matter? 

"See?" I said.

Like my mother, I do have habitual thoughts of which are not good. I am prone to anxiety and never learned how to cope. All I know how to do is apologize for myself which I have had to do, sobbing, my entire life. Sometimes when I get a new therapist, they want me to talk about my parents a lot. I tell them how I would apologize and apologize and how I'd be met with one of two things depending on the parent I flaellated myself to:
A. Dad: Promise me you will do what I ask in the future. Tell me you love me. 
B. Mom: It's fine, I do not love you as much anymore.

In some ways, the only thing I can rationalize every hurt or mistake with is by telling myself everything ever is all my fault. I cannot find it in me to blame anyone for the way they treated me, not this boyfriend, not my old friends, not my parents. 

"With this particular person", I told my friend after some thinking, "I'm counting down days until I am very officially abandoned (not sure what's worse though, knowing or a surprise), and it's my fault again." 

With chips in my mouth, I thought about how I wouldn't respect me either if I was able to get all the things I offer freely, without any consequence for my previous actions. It would be nice to have someone who I know I could always go back to when stuff didn't work out, someone who loved me unconditionally by mistake, and put out and cooked for me afterward and in return asked only to be told they were loved and wanted while being fucked and for us to maybe sit quietly next to each other once or twice a week.

I didn't have the heart to verbalize any of that though, it wasn't his business and he avoids my blog, so I asked how Italy was.

Out of my discovery, my body has proven to be very in-tune with some sixth sense I've always possessed. It scared my mother. She told me once all of my dreams come true. Now, coupled with a pre-law degree and anger, all of this gives me tact which is something I hold over my mother. She has impassivity, I have the ability to speak fluently. I am in agreement with my friends that the degree I hated to get is the most useful thing I own, except for the part where my professors forgot to teach me how to let go of things that tell me they want to hurt me, or how to not wake up in the middle of the night crying to try and get the ouchie out of my chest. That's the only reason I cry mostly. My body feels ugly and heavy and like a burden. I lack the skill to hide it as adeptly as I'd like to. Six months ago I felt like this and wanted to make a boy love me and adore my body so much that he wouldn't have eyes for anyone else. I got rid of clothes that didn't suit me. 

I can take comfort in the idea that this boy I loved so much more than I've loved anything else will forget about me, that, or I will become an inconvenience. I suppose that is what I am preparing myself to become. An inconvenience seems much worse though than someone who just never fit well or doesn't anymore.

I feel useless against most things that come against me. I have such limited control. I say this, but know I can directly control almost everything around me.