Take me off the pedestal. Now.

Being the one on the Pedestal.

It's lonely up here. And I don't think I chose that.

I get it, the habit of falling for someone, or at least *thinking* you’re falling for someone, and putting them on the imaginary yet very real pedestal. I’ve been guilty of it many times, in fact, I might currently be in the midst of guilt… But I’m almost never the one being popped up on that lofty lonely height.

Until yesterday. Yesterday, someone told me they were ‘falling for me’ and clearly they weren’t. They had mistaken my average and normal behaviour, for some great act of kindness. Bestowing me with gifts and characteristics I do not have. Patience, kindness, softness. All beautiful things, none of which I have. In fact, I’m pretty sure I am impatient, rude, and cold as fuck at least 90% of the time. Everything annoys me, I have a short fuse. But they had such a rose-tinted outlook to the point all my red flags blended into the skyline.

And I was left feeling offended.

Offended. And odd response, yes. But not really when you think about it. I thought they saw me. I thought that they acknowledged the good with the bad. But they didn't.

I had been so looking forward to getting to know this person, to going slowly, to exploring, finding out about them, over the course of months. Earlier this year, I broke up with someone who I thought was going to be my partner for a very long time, and I was relieved at the fact that only a few months later I had met someone who joked the way I did and whose company I enjoyed. But it was early days. And they too had come out of a relationship, but theirs had been so much more recent, and so so much more painful.

I was enjoying having someone to stumble through singledom with. Casually laughing through epiphanies and self-discovery. I thought we saw each other clearly. How neither of us was ready, so we could enjoy unready together.

In hindsight, this was dumb. Doubling down on a rebound is never a good idea. Because, that's all I really was to them. All their words of ‘falling in love’ and monogamy. Werent coming from a place of honesty. They were coming from misplaced obsession. And I know that feeling. It’s not love, it's a form of control, when your world is falling apart and you want something, someone, to make it all mean something. It's what happens when you have nothing else in your life, and then you see comfort, feel safety for a moment. And you chase that feeling like an addict in withdrawal. Convincing yourself that everything you saying is rational, and that you’re healthy and healed and ready to be a partner to this amazing source of comfort.

So I was offended. I thought I had a friend. What I actually had was a parasite.

See what I mean, I'm a fucking nightmare.

So now I think how cruel I was to put all those who came before up here. All the friendships that could have been real, strong, intricate friendships. Warped out of shape by my desire to be saved. I want to be saved almost every day, but to admit that is a kind of weakness that disgusts me to my core, and for those who have the audacity to admit that to others, I'm both alarmed and in awe. Desperation breeds from the desperate. Neither or which I want to be or deal with. Screw That.