Is it possible to give yourself a therapy session?

Don’t blame me. Love made me crazy. I’ve written about the fairy tales, or lack thereof in my life and the bleak rejection only a fuckboy can evoke before, so I won’t rehash it. This post is a brutal introspection of my own self worth. The self worth that I have misguidedly entirely placed in others. If you know me, none of it will be a surprise, except maybe that I’ve only just had this rather obvious realisation. Literally, I had this realisation driving home at 10:30pm last night while singing to ol’ Tay-Tay on the freeway. 

It started when I was 17. The story is cliche; chubby, uncool teenager meets a boy and suddenly is happy. Except the boy only hung out with me because he had it bad for my best friend, unbeknownst to me she had it bad for him too. They say your first love is the hardest to get over, but I think they’re all just as bad, that one just sets the bar that all others will be measured against. The bar was pretty low, a lover always in secret, two best friends eventually lost, physical abuse, death threats and a large amount of money gone. Worse though, I changed myself to please him. Car enthusiast, heavy rock lover, smoker, drinker, liar. I hated who I became for him, but didn’t try to stop it either. I was relieved when he dumped me and made off with my friend. Despite all that trauma though, somehow my takeaway was, “why didn’t he love me, after all I did for him?” His words still pop back into my head sometimes, “you’d be so much fun to marry”... 

The next serious relationship started with him literally saying to me, “wow, guys really treat you bad, huh?”.  If my life was a movie, that was the foreshadowing for the third act. Four years of him trying to change me to be a perfect wife for him through emotional blackmail and negging worked. Suddenly, I was another new person. Christian, non-drinker, non-smoker, soft rock lover, Mohawk stylist. Despite the more thousands of dollars lost, the porn addiction blamed on me, the religious guilt, the thankless early mornings driving his disqualified ass to work every day, the cheating, I thought this was love. I wanted to marry him, but according to him “God didn’t think it was a good idea”, and I was dumped again. Yet again, my mind reeled constantly with “but I did everything he wanted, why didn’t he love me?”

Unsurprising to everyone but me, the cycle continued. Next I was a UFC loving, hard partier who did ridiculously risky things for his approval. Then a movie buff, with a penchant for wine who was suddenly OK with an ‘open’ relationship. I finally caught myself this last time though, halfway through planning to cook some halloumi and pretending not to care about anything, including that this silly boy never texts me back and is keeping my textiles hostage, I realised what I was doing. Just the night before, I had bemoaned my best friends behaviour to another friend, “can’t she see she’s changing herself to please her boyfriend?”. Who am I to judge her though? I’ve been changing myself over and over all in the pursuit of approval from men, even when they’ve already rejected me. 

I’ve always known I was boy-crazy. I didn’t know I was actually certifiable though. What was I even like before them!? It’s the classic single-gal trope, I need to “find myself” or some shit. And I guess that’s what this blog has somewhat become, therapy. A way for me put down what I think about the things that have happened to me and who I want to be at the end of all this. It’s honestly cathartic putting it all out there in ether. 

‘Don’t blame me, love made me crazy, if it doesn’t you ain’t doing it right’, sings broken heart guru Taylor Swift. Well, Tay-Tay, I think you might be wrong on that one. Love made me crazy, but I definitely wasn’t doing it right.