Love Is Blind

 Love is Blind is what I am watching right now. It's scratching a morbid itch. I appreciate the neediness. I recognize it inside myself. The level of desperation that wants someone to choose them and also wants to have, potentially, the adoration of all Netflix subscribers. I remember the age I wanted to be famous. Sometimes I still dream of writing something so interesting and insightful I am catapulted into the spotlight as I assume Lena Dunham felt when she called herself the voice of our generation. Or whatever. Don't quote me on quoting her on that.

I'm probably still at the age as well where I want someone to become obsessed with me.

Yet, I'm also at an age where I feel deeply judgmental about this unhinged behavior in other people.

I have a weird habit of repotting my plants without gardening gloves. So I have dirt under my nails. After getting ringworm from Little Gray Cat when she came inside, I realize that I am playing with ringworm fire. As with most things, this is mostly a habit borne out of laziness. I'm fairly confident the potted plants aren't going to have bad soil, but you never know. Bad soil is everywhere. I feel like I've been growing in bad soil.

I sort of stopped writing this when I realized how repetitive it was beginning to feel.

And then after an encounter with an old friend I had a bad falling out with in 2016, I was reminded of how people have claimed this hurt them. I should probably go to therapy for this because I feel like the ending of that friendship irreparably changed my perception of myself in a way that nothing else really has. Well, it's probably not the ending as much as the continued presence she has had in my periphery since. When Scott told me he had forgotten he could be happy during our relationship, I think at the time it felt like that would be something I could never move past. I don't really hear about him though. And I've come to realize that was my most Love is Blind age when I just begged to be chosen over other people. It was accurate in retrospect to interpret our relationship as one of resignation and probably mutual disdain. But, although we'd had a rocky road, I thought in 2016 I had a genuine friendship with this person. I thought we hung out because we enjoyed each other's company after all. 

I've also been watching a lot of Vanderpump Rules lately. I'm living vicariously through drama that won't actually have any bearing on my life. As I'm sure you know, Tom Sandoval was a messy bitch and blew up his relationship with Ariana in a way that was not unfamiliar. The long relationship destroyed by an affair, the gaslighting, the financial mess. Although, to be fair, the affairs Scott had were longer and didn't quite cause the end of our relationship. Anyway, that's not the point of this digression. The point is, Tom Sandoval is a terrible person who is in a lot of ways really toxic. Still, if his cast mates were legitimately worried about his mental health and that he might kill himself, they probably wouldn't be trying to get him to apologize to them, calling him a dangerous person, and filming with him. This is when I compare myself to Tom Sandoval because I've done cocaine and people I thought were my friends have told me I'm a toxic monster. Which, in itself, maybe I could have gotten past. Really, it's the years of being rejected after trying to take accountability, and coming to terms with what I feel is an indisputable fact that you should not tell someone you think might kill themselves that you were only hanging out with them because you were worried they were going to kill themselves, but you actually did not enjoy them as a person. Having to back out of events because I was too uncomfortable around this person has fed a lot into that feeling of wanting to be chosen, too. Our last interaction in which I again tried to appeal to her to make things less awkward and she reasonably let me know she felt she needed to protect herself and maintain a boundary, I realized I should have been creating a boundary as well. I never should have let people tell me we were both in the wrong, because I was never trying to hurt her. I never told her she was a terrible person and a terrible friend. I didn't berate her when she was drunk. I just expressed my emotions processing a traumatic night to you. Without naming her or putting identifying details. I never weaponized her mental health. It's probably for the best that she decided to stop filming with me.

I think I tried to rely on the group chat a lot over the last break, but you're probably who I really need to talk to if I'm not going to go to therapy. So, I'm back to share my emotional damage more often, I guess. It's been a while since I blocked the sources of my PTSD that is not real PTSD. I should reclaim this space.