Drugs and Other Substances

I wish I weren’t this emotional. Sometimes, it feels like a Tonka truck of emotions is running me over, leaving me behind in its dust to bleed out on the pavement. I often wonder to myself, is it really me that’s so different? So unbearably unique? Or is everyone else just heartless?

OK, maybe not heartless. Not as… emotionally invested, let’s say. I find myself emotionally invested in a lot of things. Not because I want to be, but because other people’s feelings often become my own. If someone is mad at me, I get mad at myself. If someone is happy with me, I'm happy with myself. If someone is hard on me, I am ten times harder on myself. If someone is _____, then I am _____ (insert emotion here).

I don’t know why I have this incessant need to wrap my identity up with whoever happens to be closest to me at the moment. But here’s the thing, I don’t do this with everybody. It’s impossible to do this with more than one person at a time. Impossible to do it well, anyway. You can’t accurately project the emotions of two or three people every day, all day. Someone’s emotional state is bound to take precedence and override the other two.

I may have already lost you. Unless you feel as deeply as I do, or imitate the actions and emotions of others to minimize their chance of leaving you as much as I do, then you probably think this is a bunch of melodramatic bullshit some heartbroken teenager is writing in their diary. Or maybe that’s exactly what I am. Forever mentally trapped in the mind of a heartbroken teenager.

I put my pen down. That’s enough writing for one day. My new therapist told me to keep a journal. She says I have too many big feelings and not enough personal space to deposit them, whatever that means. She also says I have the tendency of becoming addicted to people, much like one may find themselves addicted to drugs and other substances. This, on the other hand, is not so difficult to wrap my head around. I know exactly what this means.

I’ve been in six relationships in the past seven years. When you do the math, I probably come across as someone who is deathly afraid of commitment. But oh, if only it could be that simple.

I am addicted to people, love, relationships – call it whatever you want. But people are my drug. And not just any people, but the kind that take you for a wild ride. You know the type, the ones that lift you up when you’re feeling down, only to pull you back down again when you’re feeling a little too confident. Confirming the worthlessness you already feel within you while simultaneously making you believe you need them in order to feel good again. Yeah, it’s a vicious cycle. Try to keep up.

The serotonin boost, the rush of endorphins, the adrenaline roller coaster from never knowing what comes next. Most people hear the words love addiction and think to themselves, well isn’t that nice, being addicted to the most natural, most beautiful thing in the world! As a love addict, people assume you must not have any “real” problems. It’s not like a surplus of love can kill you, so what’s the harm, really?

And they’re right. Too much love probably won’t kill you. But constantly requiring the validation of others just might.

My phone lights up on my nightstand. I fight the urge to immediately check who is texting me, but then remember what I’m supposed to do instead. Take three deep breaths to calm my nervous system down, along with the fight-or-flight response mobile notifications activate within the brain, then re-evaluate if now is a good time for distractions or not. After I’m done breathing, I decide that it is.

I lean over and read the name. Eli. I feel a whirl in my chest and my body heat rising as my blood starts to pump. I feel like I’ve just ran a marathon. A second ago, I was lying motionless in bed, and now I want to jump all around the room to shake this excess energy out of me.

I know I’m not supposed to be texting anyone new right now. My therapist told me it’s way too early. She advised me to take some time off for myself, not only to heal from previous partners, but to form an actual relationship with myself for once. That’s a big one. Not knowing who the hell you even are because you’ve consumed your entire life with trying to make other people love you. Which translates into, trying to make other people happy so when they look at you, they associate you with happy feelings. A form of manipulation on my part, I know. I don’t actually feel the deep, yearning need to make everyone around me happy for no particular reason. It’s because I want them to like me. And it’s exhausting.

Eli is a guy I met in my fine arts program. He’s funny, sweet, charming. All the things you’re supposed to look for in a person. My heart leaps at the sight of him, and I’m not proud to admit I’ve fantasized quite a few times about us being a thing. You know you’re a real love dork when your fantasies consist of doing mundane couply stuff with someone you barely even know.

I’ve been trying my best to hold back with Eli. Don’t fall in love over the little things, like him telling me I’m smarter than other girls or sending me meme accounts I might find amusing. Don’t overshare large, or even minute, details about yourself too early on. This shows a lack of boundaries and desperation for someone, anyone, to make you feel seen. And do not, under any circumstances, expect a damn thing from these dudes. Because chances are, they’re not exactly looking to give you the world like all those princess movies had us believing before we even had the chance to step foot into preschool.

But no matter how hard I try to pull back, Eli just keeps on creeping in. Part of me feels like I’m being too harsh on the kid, that he’s done nothing to deserve having to wait hours for a text back. That’s the problem with recovering from excessive people-pleasing tendencies. When you’re not investing all your energy into other people, you feel like a selfish, egotistical bitch for no particular reason. It’s classic black or white thinking. I’m either overextending myself so people will like me, or I’m a narcissistic buffoon only looking out for herself. Pick one, says my brain.

But deep down, I know this isn’t the whole truth. I’ve completed enough therapy sessions to understand the subconscious wiring of my brain. The real reason I feel anxious over not texting Eli back right away is because an even larger part of me believes he will lose interest in me altogether if I don’t.

The problem with trying too hard to make other people love you is that you often forget about the importance of making sure you love you. People like me have it backwards. We honestly believe someone else’s love and approval of us is magically going to make us love and approve of ourselves. As if we are somebody’s pet rather than an actual human being with our own autonomous thoughts and feelings.

So yes, at the root of my people-pleasing and love addiction lies the insufferable need to be liked, wanted, accepted. It’s completely selfish and has absolutely nothing to do with making other people feel good because I genuinely care for their well-being.

My therapist also told me (…last time I start a sentence like this, I swear) that I should find other things to fill up my time and space. Things that don’t involve other people – or perhaps more reliable people, like close friends or family. People I can trust, depend on, and have more secure attachments with. I never really thought about it before, but the ways in which I interact with friends and family is wildly different from how I interact with potential romantic partners. I trust they’ll always come back to me, regardless of how long I take to reply to their texts or how many days I go without speaking to them. I don’t feel rejected when they reschedule a hangout because I understand they have busy, unpredictable lives that have absolutely nothing to do with my worth as a person. I feel safer when it comes to sharing how I feel because I know one little, passing emotion isn’t going to blow up the entire friendship.

So how did I get to this place of needing excessive affirmation from some boy I met in art history class? Or at the comedy club on a Saturday night? Or on some dating app notorious for its hookups?

It all stems back to one simple, yet convoluted answer. Lack of self-love. It probably doesn’t help that our entire socioeconomic structure is built upon the illusion of needing somebody else in order to feel whole and complete. But it goes deeper than just that. I never felt accepted for who I was growing up. I would try way too hard to receive minimal affection from those around me, only to realize I had nothing left in me to give myself. I fell into the pattern of putting other people’s needs above my own not because anyone forced me to, but because it seemed like an easy way to win over their short-term approval. I became the kind of person people assumed they could walk all over. And whenever I would try to stand up for myself, they would quickly push me back down again because a pushover is more comfortable to be around than someone who is decisive, independent, and takes no shit.

And all these beliefs, all these stories I created in my head about how I deserve to be treated, still follow me around everywhere I go. But rather than evenly apply this belief across multiple people, somewhere along the way, I unconsciously decided it would be easier to zero it in on my dating prospects. I have yet to know why, but the more I write in my journal, the closer I come to figuring it out.

I look outside my window and see the garden of marigolds my grandmother planted when I was fourteen years old, shortly before she passed. Whenever we’d sit on the front porch, she’d look over at the bed of marigolds, smile and say, “Imagine a bright, golden light bursting inside of you. Charging you with the power to start over, just like the sun at the dawn of a brand new day. That is the power of the marigold. Every time you gaze upon these flowers, they ignite within you the strength of a thousand suns.”

I think of her words every time I see the marigolds. But for the first time in my life, I think I finally understand what she meant by them. I don’t have to keep replaying the same old narrative, I can start anew at any given moment. I decide who I get to be, not my past, not other people, and certainly not some boy who claims to be a fine arts major but doesn’t even know the difference between impressionism and expressionism.

I pick up my phone again as I look out at the marigolds. With the strength of a thousand suns, I mute Eli’s notification. I am my only source of light and today, I’m choosing to shine it all on myself.