I just found this in my saved files. I don't remember writing it, but I must have. It is not a flattering look at myself. I am not even sure I should post it except it is honest. I feel these things about myself. It seems I wrote this a while back, at least a year. I have made some changes since then. I know my mom loves me now, I feel it as much as I can seem to feel love from anyone. I still don't think I really feel love from people, or I don't allow myself the freedom of feeling love because as soon as I let someone love me, it will be taken away, or I will do so dumb fucking thing that destroys it in an instant.




Self portrait
Who am I? What do I look like to others? What do I see in the mirror? What is inside me that no one sees?

I am a lesbian, teacher, learner, daughter, mother, sister, friend, poet, writer, genius, idiot, likeable bitch, drag king, singer, performer, trickster, joker, creator, artist, neurotic, dork, and the list could keep going. I am those things, but who I am is really such a complicated thing. I am unwell. I have issues. One of my issues is manipulation. When I am most unwell I am most likely to try to manipulate people into paying attention to me. I am supposed to remember that making people feel sorry for me is not making them like me. I am too smart for my own good sometimes. I know how to get people to do things, pliant people who have issues of their own. I know how to find their issues and use them to my advantage. I am sick.

What do people see when they see me? A sick person? Or a confident one? That depends a lot on who is looking. Some people never see the dark icky side of me. But it is always there. I think I fool myself into thinking people don’t see my dark side but I think maybe more of them do than I let on.

I see myself as fucked up. I see myself as a useless person. The only thing I am really good at is showing affection to people I want to impress. I am really good at lavishing gifts and attention on people I love. I fell in love too easy. Fell, I meant to say fall. But either way I think it might be true.
The measure of my mood can be seen in how any relationship I am in is going. I have a pathological need to be in love. I always feel lost without it. I never feel love from people who say they love me, but I feel love for them and that is usually enough to keep me coming back for more. I am addicted to the feeling of being in love. How fucked up is that? All I want is for love to be like it is in poems and stories. I want it to be on both sides. I want to feel it and believe it the way people in movies do. Something in me that should know what love is seems to be broken. I think I know my dad loves me. I hope my step-daughter does. I think my nephew does. My mom says it, shows it and yet I still can’t really feel it.

I keep forming relationships with women who aren’t able to love me. I want them and I just charge ahead, knowing I will fall in love. Knowing I will get hurt, and yet I just go on and get hurt. I think that makes me about as dumb as people have always told me I am.

I hate that I can’t feel love. Its one of the reasons I want to die. What is the point of a life without feeling love? I want to stop taking my meds because I think they dull my feelings. My life feels like it has no point; I am 47 years old. I have nothing to show for my life except a collection of writing I am too afraid to submit for publication. I don’t have a job, a family, anything. I have a job, not a career I don’t have the life a 47 year old should have. I am alone and I hate it.

I want a life that means something. I want to teach, I want to learn, I want to die. I hate living this way.

My self portrait seems to be self pity. I am a lot of things, many of them very good things, and yet I feel like the bad seriously out weighs the good.

I don’t want to quit smoking. I don’t want to be a nonsmoker right now. I know with my mom’s health I should quit, but I cannot right now. I cannot because I don’t want to. I do not want to weight 360 pounds again. I am sucking on my smokes and I am sucking my thumb again. I haven’t needed to suck my thumb for years, and here I am sucking it again. If sucking my thumb keeps me a little more stable, a little saner, if it keeps me from scratching, cutting, or flat out killing myself, then I am going to suck my thumb.

This self portrait thing isn’t going the way it should; this has been a stream of consciousness letter to me more then anything.