I wouldn’t need to have trust issues if people actually lived up to themselves. If their appearance wasn’t something different from the thing underneath.
If people didn’t lie with word and deed, with the expectations they had for themselves - with all the little signs and gestures when it doesn’t matter, when they confide to you that they’re this sort of person.
When they intimate to you in outraged tones about the awful things those other people did, how it just doesn’t make sense how people could do things like that. When they come through all the time, when it doesn’t matter. When they stand by, confidently, to say they have your back.
And they do these things because that’s who they think they are, but it isn’t.
They don’t understand the terrible things people do because they can’t admit to themselves what they were feeling when they did them.
Once upon a time I thought facing my demons would make me strong. And it didn’t, because strength the way we think about it is a lie. When you feel confident and powerful and secure, you’re weak. There’s so little reason to struggle for the things you want. You have so much to lose.
No, it didn’t make me strong, but it did help me understand.
It’s almost never about malice. It takes a lot of emotion to hurt people deeply, to want to, to actually manage it.
It’s just that they don’t understand that they’re not the people they’re pretending to be. That they’re ignorant about the ugly parts of themselves, the parts you want to pretend aren’t real, so you can look in the mirror and believe you’re beautiful.
They don’t understand them, so they’re a slave to them, and somewhere deep down they know, somewhere they know that’s the choice they made.
Because apparently it’s fucking worth it to let the bad parts own you, if you never have to look at them.
Except a person isn’t just a bunch of parts, and a picture with pieces cut out is just a lie. The truth of a person with all the ugliness stripped away isn’t beauty, it’s a monster, a caricature.
And I fucking hate them for it, for being able to believe in it, for wanting to.
I know my demons, I know guilt. I know what’s it like to look back on myself and be disgusted, to want to pretend that person wasn’t me and it was just a mistake that really just wasn’t me, honest, I swear.
It was a lot easier, you know. Owning it is harder. Owning it makes me feel disgusting and foolish, like nothing I do could be right. It makes me think about all the other things in my life I’m fooling myself about, it makes me think that it doesn’t even matter if there are good parts to me, that nothing could make up for it.
It makes me worry that no one who really knew me could actually like me. That no one would forgive me for being who I am. That anyone who says they do is just pretending because they want something.
That’s the price. That’s what it costs to be honest with yourself. Thinking all those ugly, disgusting thoughts. Flirting with self-hatred, that vicious promise of self-destruction always lying in wait.
And it’s worth it. It’s hard, but it’s worth it, so fuck everyone.
Fuck everyone who pretends to be dependable, honest, kind, righteous because they can’t bring themselves to face themselves. Fuck everyone who makes everyone else pay for the failures they can’t admit.
If they were better, I wouldn’t have to have trust issues. I wouldn’t die by inches every time a little piece of me didn’t abandon hope and made the mistake of actually believing they’d follow through.
Fuck everyone for being so goddamn disappointing. Fuck everyone for making trust a mortal goddamn sin.
Fuck everyone for not being who I needed you to be, who I want you to be, because I’m so tired of being alone in the dark with all the terrible things about being human that you just won’t face.
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