I think I crave drama

i don’t have a warm loving family. i have a dysfunctional chaotic yell and scream and cry family. my first reaction to any kind of pain or ache is to run, is to scream. i curse like a sailor, i curse the universe and the heavens and the stars. i hate my family, i love my family. love isn’t nice or sweet. it’s obsessive and controlling and asks you to change every part of yourself. at least that’s what i’ve been taught. my family loves me, but i doubt often if they like me.

i can’t go a couple days without arguing with my father. he snaps and i snap and he curses and i yell back. he’s unkind and i become small again. i turn into a child telling the big strong hero to stop being a meanie. to stop yelling because it’s too loud and i don’t like it. but he’s the better choice right? because he may yell and tell me i’m being a smart ass, but my mothers words dig knives into my spirit.

my mother, my dear mother who i haven’t spoken to in almost two years, is a venus flytrap. drawing you in with her sickly sweet smile and her big dreams and plans and the eating you alive when you don’t follow her every command and order at the split second she makes the command. her father was a military man and i’m sure she would’ve been suited for a high ranking role in command. she demands and demands. often telling us exactly that we are her. that every part of us, my sister and i, belongs to her and as such we are at her will. you can be anything you want to be as long is it’s what i want you to be. you’re pretty, but you’d be prettier thinner. you’d be prettier with more makeup and more expensive clothes and if you just didn’t let your wild curls fly. yet, she’d kill for your hair, she’d kill to be this young, to be this light.

my relationship with my family is dysfunctional because at a certain point they realized that i saw myself not as part of the tribe, but as my own person with my own views and interests and dreams. i’ve always been the odd one out in my family. my cousins looked at me with wide eyes as i spoke back to my parents. as i treated the adults and elders with the same respect, or lack thereof, that they gave me. they criticized me constantly when i did not conform to the whims of my mothers emotions. but i knew them as i know now being compliant and submissive will not save you from your abusers. a part of them, a deep rooted part of them wants you to react they want you to fight back. it angers them more when you are perfect when you don’t misstep. when you don’t fuck up they have nothing to blow up over.

so i withdrew. i was quiet. i spoke about nothing important. i rattled on and on about nonsensical things. i became existential and emotional and vain and vapid. my every conversation about minimalism and fashion and photography. i spoke about nothing beyond surface level. i gave short answers that were preprogrammed. my family can’t hurt me with what they do not know. i don’t tell them of my deeper aspirations or ambitions. i change cities and hair and jobs and clothes. i dated guys and had my heart broken in private. i planned future secret elopements and how i would eventually take my secret children to meet my family. i wanted them to know nothing about me. i wanted them to know everything about me.

i would let things slip. let boyfriends names come out my mouth. let plans mistakenly come out before their time. i was seeking attention i wanted people to know, wanted them to want to know. just because you know you shouldn’t engage doesn’t mean you don’t want to. i could’ve pulled back more. i could’ve runaway and cut everyone and everything off. i can’t pull away though. how hard it is for a branch to separate from a tree even when it’s rotted.

so i crave some bit of drama while claiming to want peace. i blew up at my ex boyfriend and crashed out on a guy who drew me along for weeks. i’m trying to bite my tongue with my new boyfriend though. fighting against the dark evil core that rests near my heart like a parasite feeding on its aches and pains. he’s so consistent. he never doubts or worries or stresses about us the way i do. when i doubt him he just reassures me. when i want to be mad at him he just shows up in a way that completely disarms me.

i’ve dated assholes. i’ve slowly come to accept that men are useless and selfish and at very least if you must have a man make sure he’s good for something. he eradicates this every thought from my head. he’s so genuine and so smart. smart beyond just knowledge, he has an emotional intelligence that makes me want to be a kinder more understanding person.

it’s not that just he’s great and i’m blinded by the rose tinted glasses it’s that if we didn’t work out i’d want to still be in his orbit. i’d want to see how great he continued to be. he’s talented and knowledgeable, but what i like most is his personality. there are not parts of him i want to overlook. there’s no “he’s so great, but…” he makes me feel like there is no rotten core. like maybe i am capable of great things. like maybe in this chaotic mess there’s a way through. i don’t want riches or things. i want whatever highs and lows the world may offer us.

i think maybe i have naive notions of love. i think maybe im so used to the fight and the fear and the anxiety that i may push him away or ruin everything. i’ve moved on quickly accepted things as they are and just wanted to forget, but there’s a fear of what if i fuck this up with him. what if i let the cruelty that im so used to, that’s second nature to me hurt him.

i’m learning to let go of the things i cannot control and focus only on what i can. i can’t control if he changes his mind and thinks im too much. i can’t control if he decides he doesn’t like me anymore. i can’t control all the anxieties i have of this. he’s direct and has been the entire time i’ve known him so why would i doubt him now? why would i let my anxieties ruin something great. i don’t want to love him the way my family loves me. i don’t want to treat him the way my family treats me. and i think that’s what makes it easier to change.

i want to be softer and kinder. i want to be fully myself. i don’t want to hide away parts of myself and hope he doesn’t discover them. i want him to know how i tick and i want to know how he ticks. i ask him the same questions time and time again. i look for new aspects of things he’s already told me so i can fully grasp why he thinks the way he thinks. he hates 80s music but i love 80s music. so every part of 80s music and every artist and every aspect of production and similar music i question him on intrigued by his specific view.

he probably tires of repeating himself, but i love the way his mind works. i love the way his tastes are so distinct and specific. i think for so much of my life men have just told me their opinions and expected me to take it at face value because they were men and of course they were right. he lets me know why he thinks the way he thinks and how exactly he feels. i don’t have to guess or be cautious walking carefully on a frozen lake before i’m pulled under by his emotions.

i remember the warmth i felt the first time i was close to him and i remember wanting to stay in that warmth as long as he’d let me. i remember every kiss like it just happened. the butterflies in my stomach and the flutter after we pulled away. when i fall i fall deeply. i fall without a safety net and hope for the best. months ago i wrote about a boy i was crushing on and i meant every word of it at the time, but being with him is so much deeper than that. it’s so much more consuming and lovely.

a week after meeting him, he went away for the weekend, and when he came back sunday night i waited eagerly. i made a light dinner, a chicken caesar salad, because he was coming in late and i put on a new dress, a white halter mini dress, that i bought with the hopes he’d like it. i remember opening the door and hesitating. i bit my tongue not wanting to be the first to say something. he kissed me and the dropped his bags in my bedroom. in the doorway to my bedroom he pulled me close, “did you miss me?” he asked. i smiled sheepishly, “i didn’t know if it’d be too clingy to say i missed you after only two days…” he kissed me again. “i don’t think that at all i missed you while i was gone.”

embarrassingly a firework went off in my head. i’d never not been too much. i’d never not felt like i was feeling the wrong thing. like maybe i fell too soon. like maybe everything was all in my head and one sided. i think sometimes the things that i think are normal are perceived as so far out of the norm and completely not okay. it’s something that i’ve wanted to work on. how to be less. how to care less. how to want less. how to shrink myself so that someone can appreciate all the parts they want to and not remember the parts they don’t want to.

i know that’s why i date the way i date. i only seek older men whose intentions are clear. they’re using me for the same things i’m using them for. i can understand their ailments and their rages because i’ve been putting up with them my entire life. i can conform when i need something or want something. i always believed that when you date someone you pick your struggles. maybe he’s terrible in bed but he’s incredibly affectionate. or he’s short but he’s gorgeous. he’s broke, but hard working and generous. a rich man who’s stingy is far worse than a broke man. he can give, but he makes you suffer.

this theory of love stems from reading a shakespeare poem. learning sonnet 130 in my english class when i had a crush on a boy who to put it in layman’s terms mirrored diego rivera changed the entire course of my life. he was nerdy, geeky, awkward, had a weird laugh and was always sweaty, but he was kind and funny and made me feel seen. so i’ve never had a thing for looks. i believe that there is a lid for every pot. when i see a conventionally unattractive person with a partner i think they must be a better person than i am, more understanding, and more secure. life is hard enough, but add being ugly to the list and it makes everything so much worse.

i’ve never been bold enough to put myself out there. i’m shy and quiet and awkward. i’ve had full hips and thighs and cheeks since i hit puberty. but it’d be remiss of me to act as if i don’t swing between periods of i’m the prettiest girl in the world and i am an ugly bridge troll how can anyone stand to look at me. I think or rather I hope others feel the same. So I don’t put myself out there I make my intentions obvious then hide behind my humor or my vapidness to quell any embarrassment that comes from lack of reciprocation.

Im terrified to be truly seen. To be truly know and have to face the worst parts of myself because I stupidly fell in love is my biggest fear. Because I have a hard enough time accepting these parts so how could anyone else. Because if you, a stranger choosing to love me, can accept all of me why can’t the people who have to love me accept all of me. Why am I reduced to perfectly squared boxes with people who helped build the mosaic of my personality?

And yet I stay. I don’t leave and I don’t run. I let myself be pulled into their whims and their desires. I consume and indulge. I gossip and scheme. I start these schemes. I suggest the crude opinions. I am the problem I claim to be running from. I don’t shut up ever. I talk and talk and talk. I will go through my call list when I get a chance and call everyone who comes up. Going through everyone and hearing their tales and sharing my own. Weaving relationships quilts with secrets and stories. Up and down strengthening my tree while working to cut the rotten roots entangling me.

Cause for all the talks of peace I’m still hooked on drama. For all my weeks and months clean one night picking at a loose thread has me completely unraveled. But maybe just maybe I need to come undone. Come undone completely so I can see all the parts that still serve me and weave those back together. I am a mosaic piece, a quilt of where I’ve been and what I’ve learned, and one day I won’t doubt that the people around me see me for all that I am and I won’t be scared to let them.