Black or white

Humans love black and white thinking. We love categorizing everything into neat little boxes that they don’t actually fit in. I am fairly good at not letting this kind of thinking take over my life completely... except I'm not. That doesn't make a lot of sense.

I am terrified that everyone will leave me. This is not new information for anyone who has been reading my blog posts so far. But I'm actually not even that scared, because I'm so used to believing that everyone will leave. The way that I approach relationships is from the perspective that I know they will leave me eventually -- or I'll leave them; but statistically they're more likely to leave me. I have an overwhelming need to be completely independent, because when I depend on people, when I allow myself to need things from people, that's when I'm hurt. I pretend that I like doing things alone because to admit the reality, to admit that I would rather have someone to share everything with, that is the scariest thing I've ever contemplated.

The thing is I know that I no matter how much I deserve love, no matter how much I deserve companionship and trust and good communication, it's not really in the cards for me and I've known that for at least a year. I keep thinking I can overcome it if I just find the right person, but I've found right people and it hasn't worked. At this point it's safer for me to be alone because if I'm alone at least I'm not demanding things from other people that they can't give me and at least I'm not being destructive or selfish.

I don't listen when people tell me they love me and they're not going to leave me, because that's not what I need to hear. I don't know what I need to hear. I probably just need all of my trauma to go away, but that's not going to happen.

Actually, this is what I need: I need to stop loving people who don't love me in the same way. I need to stop loving people who love me but who are unable to express that love. I just need to stop. I need the part of my brain that is a hopeless romantic to shut off permanently. It's not even a particularly important part of my personality. It's just there, not really hurting anyone but definitely not helping anyone. I need it gone.

Alternately, I need someone who isn't scared to love me. But I'm too much. I have so much baggage that no matter whether I choose to talk about it or not, it's there, every time I talk to anyone, every time they see my messages and don't respond, every time they don't answer right away, every time I say I love them and they change the subject and I pull away because if I push them away then I have someone to blame when they leave because they're going to leave no matter what I do. They always leave. Even when they say they're not going to.

I'm mentally ill, like, my brain doesn't approach interacting with others in the same way that "normal" brains do. I try to explain this but I don't know if they understand. How can I know? I'll never be in their head.

I've been talking myself in circles for the past few days and I can't break this loop, the loop that says that I can't make love work unless I fix myself but I can't fix myself alone, and I have no idea what to do. I think that's what adulthood is. Having no idea what to do. Congrats me, I'm an adult now.