"IT'S NOT SIMPLE TO SAY THAT MOST DAYS I DON'T RECOGNIZE ME" -SARA BAREILLES

As I sit here alone, drunk, in my apartment, on my only night off in two weeks.. no one is texting me. No one is messaging me. No one is thinking about me. I realize that I am really, really alone. No one is going to call me and fill this silence. No one is going to fix my crap. No one is going to be my shoulder to cry on. No one is going to rescue me. I am alone. But I am also free. Free from all the chains that I fought off for years. Isn’t it funny how it’s not the chains that make us feel trapped. It’s actually the people those chains are tied to. We go through these break ups believing that we just want and need to be away from everyone. Or that we are just bad at relationships or aren’t worthy. We feel tied down and forced into some societal way of living and so we get single and we rebel because we don’t want to be told what to do. Then we get angry and blame our lack of success, our unhappiness, and our loss of self on relationships. But is it the relationship? Or is it the people that we choose to be with?

There is a love/hate relationship that I have with this loneliness. Sometimes I love the silence. Other times I’m willing to do just about anything to make it stop. It’s so loud, this silence. So I drown it out with booze and work and sex and meaningless conversations and instagram posts. Smiling away at the world as if my life is full and I’m not completely miserable. But I am miserable and I’m lonely. But what I am starting to realize is that once I become completely okay with this silence, I am really okay with it, where I don’t feel the need to drown out the loudness, that’s when I’ll be ready for something new again. But now is my time to sit in my misery, my heartache, my sadness, my drunkenness, and my loneliness and actually try to figure shit out. I will never have this again. There are times I actually believe that if I died, no one would miss me. As I sit here with no missed calls, texts, or messages, I wonder if I just up and moved across the world, would anyone notice?

My self-deprecating humor, my offhand comments, my eye roll at love and friendship, it’s just a defense. My level of care for other people is on a level that most people couldn’t even understand. But I refuse to let someone have that much of me again without proof, solid, hard proof that they would handle it with care. There’s a guy, whom I hate to admit that I’ve fallen for. You know the kind of guy you can tell anything to, and he won’t judge you. Makes you laugh so hard, you cry. That you reach for your phone to call anytime anything funny or annoying happens in your day because you can’t wait to tell him. The guy that you would rather watch be with someone else than have them out of your life. In hopes that one day he will recognize that you are who he should be with. That’s this guy. We were talking once about all the reasons we couldn’t be together, mostly because he has a girlfriend. I asked him why he chose her over me. He said to me, “because you don’t want to get married and have kids.” I wanted to tell him to go fuck himself in that very moment but instead I got defensive and started to explain myself… I am so tired of explaining myself. I said to him, angrily, “I would have kids in a heartbeat, if I believed that people actually stay.”

See, it’s not that I don’t want kids. I just want someone to make me want them. To show me that they are worthy of having kids with me. To prove to me they are capable of sticking around through the hard shit. Compromising and putting in the effort needed to make a relationship work and last. There are no two people who are destined to be together. No two people who are just made to last. Relationships take work and it doesn’t stop. You don’t get to stop. I don’t expect anyone to be perfect, but I expect effort and unconditional love. The kind that hurts inside of your soul. Someone who doesn’t give you ultimatums to your success. “We can have kids when you do this” and “we can buy a house when you do that..” Fuck you. Where’s the guy willing to live paycheck to paycheck if it meant he could wake up next to me every day. That he could father my children and grow old with me. Where’s that guy? So, yeah, I’m bitter as fuck. Where’s the guy prepared to make me sweet again? To prove to me I don’t have to be a touch shell. To wrap me up so tightly that all my walls crumble around me. I’m not asking this of you just for myself. You say you want kids, they deserve that too. Bringing a child into this world is not something you do to make yourself feel whole again. Fuck you and your selfishness if you think you have kids to fill some need or emptiness inside of you. I won’t be apart of it. So sure, blame me for not wanting kids. But show me a man willing to be a man and I will gladly love another human being more than myself. Give my body and my soul and everything I have inside of me to make them happy and intelligent and worldly. I’ll give them my kidney, my liver, my blood, my love. There’s nothing I wouldn’t give.

I’m here to tell you, though, that I don’t need a fucking man. I am capable of taking care of myself. I’ve gotten real good at being alone. Before I got with my ex-husband, I was married once before. If you can even call it a marriage.. I called it ownership. I told myself after that marriage that I needed to learn how to take care of myself, completely, before I ever got back into another relationship because I would never, ever need a man again. This is not about needing a man. This is about the need to find someone whose heart is as good as mine. Finding someone who is willing to work and love as hard as I am. No, I don’t need a man. But, I want one. When I let her come out, my soft, caring, loving side, when she’s out, I know I want all the same things that he does. I guess I just needed to see if he was willing to work to make me his. Work to make it work. Willing to deal with my baggage and break through some walls to get to my gold. It’s there. It’s deep.. but it’s there. He’s not ready. Hell, maybe I’m not ready. And maybe that’s okay. So, I’ll watch him be with her because it’s easy. Because she’s the safer choice. I get it. I really do. But I will never do easy again. Easy is not life or love or hope or success. Easy. Should. Must. Have to. All words I have removed from my vocabulary. There is nothing that I “should” be doing. I don’t “have” to do anything. I will not be what you want me to be. Ever. But I am willing to be who I am. And who I am is more than willing to be everything you need me to be, if you do the same. So, until then, I sit in the silence, ever so loud. And I fill it with sex and booze and meaningless conversation. Because one day, it will just be quiet again.