Can't We All Just Pretend to Love Me?

I'm not entirely sure where to begin because the world I live in isn't whimsical nor horrific. I have every reason to be normal, every reason to be happy, but...I'm not? In fact, I can list a hundred thousand reasons why I'm not. The problem is there's not a soul who cares. Oh, I know, there's so many wonderful people in your life, Cici! I've heard it all before. I hear it from my two happily married parents, from my two sisters, occasionally even from my kid brother, from my best friend and his wife, from my husband, from strangers on the internet.

Clearly, I'm not alone, no reason to be lonely. I look out into the sea of faces cheering me on and every logical bone in my body says I should be happy. I should glide across the battlefields that is human existence, armed with confidence from within and coated in the glistening armor of a healthy support network. It's possible. I've seen it. Right up close and personal. A piece of my damaged soul sparkles on the aforementioned armor of everyone in my life. Everyone I've crossed paths with had a little piece of me on their shield at one point, but once our paths diverted, I have no way of knowing how quickly that piece of me rubbed off.

Maybe that's the explanation for the cesspool of every emotion I never wanted that gurgles in my chest. Maybe there's a cosmic connectedness of the pieces of me I gave to protect someone else before, and as those pieces are worn down so am I. If that's the case, I really should have been more careful with how many times I let myself be someone's support network, the armor, if this highly extended metaphor still makes sense. If I'm being honest, I knew from the start I should have been more frugal with these pieces of myself.

I suppose I didn't know from the start, in the innocence of a childhood and being part of a world so new and shiny that imperfections seemed impossible and absolutes the obvious answer, but eventually I should have learned. I guess I was absent from class that day, and everyday it came up, because it didn't sink in.

"Truth or Dare?"

"Dare!" I said, in excited, adventurous, naïve glee.

"Go write Austin's name on the board!"

Neither Austin or I understood the laughter that erupted from our classmates. We looked at each other and he looked down at his desk as the lesson sank in, "everyone belongs...except you." I didn't learn so quickly. Embarrassment suppressed to the basement of my stomach where I continued to ruminate on what I did wrong.

"Truth or Dare?"

"Truth!"

Of course, I'm not a moron. I could feel the invisible wall between me and them, the implicit cell of solitary I'd been confined to, but like everything in life, indoor recess ends. Spring begins. People make mistakes, especially in Middle School. Forgive and forget, don't judge, and be kind, especially when they invite you to a party next Saturday.

It's with bitterness that I look at myself in the mirror wishing I'd judged a few more books by their covers, or at least the first few pages. It's with amusement that I look back and note I was the only one who had internalized the library metaphor they pounded down our throats. Aren't we all so fortunate that the past has past?

"Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it."

-George Santayana

As children, we are vulnerable in every sense of the word—mentally, emotionally, and physically. Blind to a world outside our own where terrible people do terrible things, sometimes to kids just like us, but even when privy to little taste of danger that the towering adults let trickle down to us, we feel invincible. Sure, some creepy white vans that say "FREE CANDY" might be traps by kidnappers, but definitely not the one in front of us.

Obviously, we are taught to counteract this and over time experience makes us more aware. As adults, we look over our shoulder at the man in the black hoodie whose blond hair has glistened in the windows of closed storefronts for the last three blocks and we keep a hand in our pockets, around our pepper spray where he can't see. The childhood promise that we're "special" and can "do anything we put our minds to" fades into the dark alleys of experience.

However, it's on nights like tonight, with tears streaming down my face, watching the clock tick closer to when I have to leave for a less than glamorous warehouse job that I am forced to admit, my heart still remembers. The sinister voice in my head that mimics the sound of my own explains "the only thing that makes you special, is that you care, because no one else does."

It reaches into the cracked cement foundations of the weathered structure of my mind to display the grimy memories that rot the floors in this old place. When you ran out of gas, did your husband come to get you? Not for two hours.

"But he was donating plasma. I know he loves me," I murmur back with shaking fake conviction. Even as the words dissolve in the tears sliding down my lip, I know the evidence presented against me. He could have left. So could the friends we reached out to when he wasn't immediately available. The truth was, I sat there shivering because loving me wasn't convenient.

"You need help?" asked the heavyset man, shadowed by the night sky as I rolled down my passenger side window.

With a knot of foreboding in my gut, my husband didn't need to be on the way for me to say, "Nah, my husband is coming with gas any minute."

The suspicions were confirmed as he stared at me from his car whilst I scrambled for the door locks, until the sound of them locking alerted him to the impossibility of his unknown plans. Every minute that ticked by until rescue signified two things: no amount of waiting would ever be worth the prospect of falling victim to a potential highway serial killer and that my life was worth less to my friends and family than a $50 plasma card.

As memories fade a softer voice speaks from my heart that I'm being overdramatic. It was a mistake of poor group communication and not letting you know about the communications in progress. They've professed their love and care a hundred times. They've seen you cry. They've comforted you when they saw it, reminding you of your beauty and strength.

I try to listen, I want this message to be true, but as I peer through the sea of supporting, loving faces I see my heart beneath their feet. On their hands drips the red stains of how I took a bullet to save them and on their shoes, the time I asked them to do the same. As I look closer at each figure in the crowd, I see the words flow effortlessly through their teeth, floating off into the abyss, never touching their heart. I peer into their minds. They know what I've been through. They know why I pick up pill bottles at the pharmacy. They know about dark fur of fear that suffocates I when I sleep. They know who left it there and how hard I've tried to get rid of it. They know.

A little deeper I venture, seeing how little they care about it. Tucked away, never touching their voice box, the apathy sits off to the side. As I kneel before the faceless mass of those I love, the pain oozes out of my pores. Unlike them, it's not contained by armor, there is no weapon to fight against it. It stains my body as I beg the dark skies above me, "Can't they just pretend to love me? Can't they just act like they care? If my armor is tarnished and my sword is dull, it's still better than this." I just want to be a person, a person like everyone else.

My mother told me, that even though the step-sisters were mean to Cinderella, she was a good person, so she married the prince, but I think the story is incomplete. Did the prince go with her when she visited her mother's grave? Did he take her to every ball afterwards? They always told me, that I had to be a good person, and if I was a good person, I might have bad days, but I'd have happy endings. While being 21 is rarely anyone's ending, it's close enough for me to ask the question childlike innocence couldn't conjure: is it true? Where I sit, it feels laughably wrong, but if I stand and squint I can see a world that it will fit into. How long do I deceive myself before it feels true? Is this what everybody else doing or am I truly...alone.