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You want to know what a terrible, horrible person I really am? I want you to want
me.
In saying that, I don't necessarily mean that I want something to come of it, that I want us to go back to navigating
the weird, more-than-friends territory of last year. I mean that I want you to want me.
I want to mean something to
you, something inexplicable, something more than just a pseudonym on a buddy list or a name in a list of numbers on your cell
phone. I want my name to evoke something deeper in you, something that tugs at your heartstrings and maybe even makes you
smile a little. Something that, maybe, makes you cry a little.
I want to be prevalent in your thoughts. I want to matter.
Whether that's a product of my need for revenge or not, I'm not sure, but I want you to want me. I want to be the person you
want to call when you think of something that you need to share with someone else.
It's funny, because I'm already
that person for so many people, but I still really, really want to be that person for you.
I don't even know why.
You
make me feel so insecure. Watching you watch me, I get nervous in a way that I haven't been since walking through the halls
of junior high, when my paranoid, puberty-ridden self knew everyone was staring at me not because I was cute or funny or charming,
but because I wasn't good enough. With you, I feel like I'm not good enough. Maybe it's because you're still the only
ex-fling that didn't wait around for me to turn you down.
Maybe it's because you rejected me first, and now I'm ready for my turn to shrug
a cold shoulder.
You make me feel childish and annoying and needy and obnoxious and unworthy and unimportant and insignificant.
I
want to be significant. Even more than that, I want you to find me more endearing than annoying. I want you to be enamored
with my idiosyncrasies. I want you to check my away message and stalk my myspace profile and occasionally glance up from your
work and wonder what I'm doing.
I want you to need me before I need you. I want you to want to talk to me before I
want to pick up the phone and dial your number.
For some reason, it's all about power with me, and I feel like I've
relinquished my hold on the upper hand. Whenever you're around, I feel like I become that horrible, petulant, needy child
that I never wanted to be, and I hate that.
It's a challenge, being friends with you. Because on one level it's about
regaining what we lost, but on another level, it's about making you want me. Making you need me.
If you see me around,
I want you to want to say hi. If you don't see me around, I want you to worry. If something bad happens to me, I want your
heart to hurt. I want you to care enough for your heart to hurt.
Right now, I don't think that you do. Which is funny,
really, because we're all about working to rebuild our friendship, but honestly? Honestly, I never thought you cared enough
for your heart to hurt. I never thought I registered as more than a psychotherapist/acquaintance in your mind. I never thought
I registered as more than someone who would listen to you. I never thought I was anything more than "the person you dump your
shit on."
Funny how certain things stay with us so well.
Maybe you were trying to degrade me, to trivialize
me, to make me unimportant.
It worked.
Because now I'm sitting here and it's almost eight in the morning and
I should be working and all I can think about is the fact that you've actually started checking in every now and again just
to say hi, and I don't know whether you're doing it because you want to or because you feel obligated to.
If I hadn't
asked you to demonstrate your commitment to this "rebuilding the friendship" thing, would I be hearing from you at all?
I
think ahead to Christmas, and I wonder if you'll ever pick up the phone and call me. I wonder if we'll ever get to that point
where you see me and want to give me a hug, where your whole face lights up like it did at the beginning of last year. I wonder
if you'll ever get to the point where we have a real, honest-to-God friendship. Where you call me just to say hi and worry
if you don't hear from me. Where you call me because you like talking to me, because I matter and because I cross your mind
and because, really, you like my sense of humor enough to stick around.
I think ahead to next week, and I wonder how
frustrated I'll be then. I wonder if I'll still keep up my end of the challenge. And I know I will, because I know how vindictive
I can be, and I really hate that this has anything to do with me being vindictive at all.
I wonder if I'm capable of
an honest friendship with you. I blamed you for caring too much about the way people perceive you but, really, I'm the same
way. I want to be wanted, to be needed, to be desired on the most primal of levels. I want to be emotionally valid.
And
I feel that way about everyone I've ever had a fling with, but that desire goes entirely unsatisfied with you, because you're
the only one I've ever met that gives me nothing to go on. I don't know if you think I'm funny. I don't know if you think
my innate ability to regress to the mental age of five is endearing or two-year-old-tantrum obnoxious. I don't know if your
arms ache to hold me when we're sitting side by side. I just know that I want them to.
When I talk to you, I wonder
if you want to run screaming from the room, and I HATE that.
You talk about how wonderful you think I am, but I've never felt so unworthy in
front of anyone in my entire life. Even when we were sitting on that porch that night on the Ybor strip and you were telling
me about your "unexpected feelings," the part of me that didn't believe you was infinitely larger than the part of me that
wanted to believe.
I don't know what I'm looking for. I know I need a sign, but I'm not sure what you have to do for
me to believe that I register on your radar. I see you do so many things for so many people, and I constantly feel like I'm
the one getting short-changed, and the only logical conclusion is that you're short-changing me because I matter less than
they do. And time will tell, really, how wrong or right I am, but I'm not a patient person. Not at all.
Your
whole mature, worldly, look-at-me-I'm-a-cocky-asshole persona? Yeah, it works. Really well. You made me believe you were better
than me, and now I need you to make me feel like we're equals again. Like I'm not just some annoying child that tags
along every now and again because you've fucked me over too much to feel okay about getting rid of me.
I don't want
to be like every other girl in the world. I want to be one of the ones that matter. I want my name to stir something deep
inside of you. Nostalgia, endearment, friendship…something. Something important.
I hate that I need that kind
of validation, because I'm not needy. I've never been needy, but now, I need to be loved. Even if it's just on a platonic
level like it is with the other exes. I need to know that I'm better than "the girl you threw away." I need to know that I
mean more than a couple of stolen kisses in the midst of inebriation and a slightly hung over "whoopsie!" in the morning.
I
am a person of substance, damn it, and I want to be recognized as such.
I love that I've managed to ramble about this
for an hour and a half. I love that I can type out all of these horrible, disgusting insecurities under the guise of telling
them to you, of all people. You're the one who doesn't care! Like you need any more reasons to start running in the other
direction.
I think that's it, though. I'm afraid of scaring you off. You came crawling back, and I'm attempting every
kind of contortion to keep you here, and that's dumb. If you're going to make a break for the exit, then you're not worth
beguiling.
You saw the real me once, and you let it go, and I'm trembling like a leaf in the wind with the trepidation
that you'll do it again, because I'm not sure I could handle two solid rejections from the same self-assured person. I'm terrified
that, in deciding to be a better person, you're going to get a good, close look at me, see all the cracks and bruises, and
decide that I'm not good enough to be a part of this better persona you've got going. Because, deep down, I never really felt
like I was good enough for you.
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