catch and release

For a fully grown adult, I have very little life experience. And for someone who has facilitated the birth of several children and endured a decade-long marriage, I have even less. Experience shouldn’t really be a factor, anyway. But it is. Oh, is it ever.

Dating. I’ve decided that one of the most overused phrases in the English language, Can’t Live With it, Can’t Live Without it, most definitively applies to dating. Who knew I was such a commitment-phobe? The last time I had to juggle prospects, I was wondering if my prom dress was too slutty (SPOILER: it was). And now I find myself desperate to find flaws in every single one of them. Why? Why, if deep down what I really want is companionship, do I constantly look for reasons to cross them off the list?

Because self esteem, that’s why. Outwardly, I am locked and loaded, fully owning my physicality and my smile, ready to banter back and forth with the best of them. But on the inside. On the inside I’m still that bruised, scarred creature. I’m still waiting for someone to tell me that I’m as __insertinsultingadjectivehere__ as I always believed.

I never noticed how much I thought to myself, and said out loud for that matter, “I’m a bad person.” It wasn’t as if I would just lay it down, clumsily like that with no preamble. But I would (and still do, shhh) use it as an excuse for almost everything. So I convinced myself it was an excuse. I convinced myself that I was constantly fucking up and doing so much wrong that a generalized excuse like, “I’m a bad person.” worked really well. Except I never realized just how easy it is to convince yourself it’s true.

How quickly and steadfastly I fell into it. One moment in life, I’m the friend who can’t comprehend how a girlfriend would stay with a guy who abused her. I was the independent finger-snapper. And I met a boy who made me think if I was worth anything, he would want me more. If I did everything right, which never happened because “I’m a bad person.” (truth: human), then I would be everything he wanted and I should have been. Fuck, is that an unhealthy way to live your life.

Apologizing constantly for things that don’t even matter, things that I didn’t even fuck up. Using sex as a way to get the things I desperately needed, things that were never given to me because I should have never been with this person. And so after a very short time of living like this, living like I needed to make up for my failings EVERY SECOND OF THE DAY, I retreated into a cave, never to come out again.

Just kidding! Here I am. I’m back. I crawled out of that tiny, dank, oppressive darkness. And now I’m blinking in the sunlight, pale and unsure of how to proceed. Do I listen to my instincts and seek out companionship, all the while knowing how easily I could repeat my past? Or do I suit up and deal with the pressure, however long it lasts, weathering a storm I’ve never been strong enough to deal with before? I would go for some sort of witty pun, or a bait-and-switch here. It’s my last line. But I guess all I’ve got is this:


I don’t know.