Emptiness, dear friend, how long has it been? This one is going to be a doozy friends. I do not find myself in a good place as I write this.

When I first started writing this blog, I was a disaster. She had just left and I didn’t know what I was going to do with myself. It hurt to breathe and I couldn’t be alone or still for more than 10 minutes without freaking out and starting to walk down the never ending spiral to depression.

I started trying to become more comfortable with myself and who I was by spending my time alone, trying to explore New York and writing. I have stopped doing all of those things and have again, thrown myself into something that didn’t really pan out. I wrote earlier about dating a girl and getting way, way too attached, way too quickly and having it go kind of weird. I saw her again the other day at an event and I realized that I really have nothing in common with her and there are a lot of things about her that annoy me. She was hot as shit, but that only goes to prove that:

Thinking back on it (and I’m sorry ahead of time if she reads this and figures out I’m talking about her): she’s a smoker (what the fuck was I thinking), she was pretty shallow, she runs with a crowd of people that I don’t like and don’t want to be around, she wasn’t super bright, she wasn’t really a nice person, and she made me feel like I needed to be something different if I wanted to have the honor of hanging out with her. So the question that begs to be asked is, why the fuck was I so into her?

More recently, I met another girl and we went on a few dates. She told me recently that she decided that she was going to try things out again with one of her ex-boyfriends, but she thought I was a very “special” person, that she appreciated how thoughtful I was, and that the timing was just a little bit off. This affected me significantly more than I thought it would. I can’t decide if I am/was super into her and am upset that it’s over, or if again, I was trying to fill some void in myself with the presence of a girl.

Trying to be perfectly objective here (which may not really be possible since this just happened): She is beautiful and she has an amazing smile, I love the way her nose wrinkles when she laughs, she reads (and can recommend good books) and it’s so hard to find someone who reads these days, she was equally willing to come watch Furious 7 with me as she was to go to the ballet or symphony or spoken word poetry slam or sit in the park and read, she’s quiet and kind, she doesn’t drink that much and doesn’t make me feel weird about not drinking, most importantly, she let me be me and I was never afraid of what I was saying or what I wanted to do. I could probably go on, but it’s definitely not healthy for me to do so.

Now she says she still wants to hang out, but being emotionally charged me, I sent her an email that probably scared the bejesus out of her and I’ll probably never see or talk to her again. I really do wish her the best and hope she is able to re-kindle what she had with her ex- because she strikes me as the type of person who deserves so much more than she has. (Although, the significantly more selfish part of me wishes that it fails miserably in a couple months and I get to see if things would have actually worked out with her. What is life without dreams?)

Where that leaves me is basically in the same place as I was before. In the same place where I was when She left. With what feels like a giant pit of emptiness buried in my stomach that just absorbs everything I put into it. I have no idea why this girl has such an impact on me. I went on a grand total of 5 dates with her, and have been talking to her for a grand total of 2 months. When She left, it made a lot more sense since we had been together for almost 6 years, and living together for basically 3.5 years.

What scares me more than I can really put words to now, is that I am positive that I am not happy with myself, and I do not know why. I do not understand how, or why I cannot be content just being me and not rely on someone else to anchor me and my basic needs to be happy. I am not even really sure what it is about being in a relationship, or even the prospect of being in a relationship that makes me enjoy being me so much more. It’s like some sort of sick validation that I am a good person that someone else could enjoy the company of.

Initially, I thought it had something to do with the fact that I enjoy taking care of other people. I love being able to treat someone else well. I love having someone who I can spend time, money and energy on. I love looking forward to dates and having something to daydream about. I thought that this was really the driving force behind why I have so much trouble being alone.

Then I thought maybe it was due more to the fact that when I am with someone and I am excited to be with someone, I find myself more motivated to do things. I find that I care about things that I usually don’t. I care about the hole in my couch, the uneven hammock on my deck, the fact that I have a deck, the color of my apartment, the cleanliness of the floors. I care more about my well-being, my stress levels, my mental health.

I care about myself.

But that doesn’t make a ton of sense either. How many times, have how many people said, in how many different ways that you need to love yourself before you can love someone else? How often did I try to tell myself that was the goal of my blog and my wanderings when She initially left me. How is it so easy for me to fall back into the same trap of giving the entirety of my self-worth and image over to the care and judgement of someone I barely know?

How do I stop?

How do I find my own inner worth when all I feel inside is empty?

I think in part it comes down to this: I am exceedingly introverted. Everyone I know, knows this. I hate being around groups of people, even if it is all of my best friends. I cannot stay at parties or gatherings that long because I get overwhelmed and need to leave. I have a very hard time connecting with people, but when I do connect with them I am more than willing to pour the entirety of my being into their hands so they know exactly who and what I am.

It is so, so hard for me to find people that I like. I trust very easily, and I find that many people are not worthy of that trust, so it takes me a very, very long time to decide who I want to talk to.

So when I find someone, I just go all-in (just like how I play poker) and see how they handle it. If they can’t handle it, then oh well. If they can handle it, then I’ll never abandon them as a friend (unless they do some seriously fucked up shit).

The problem is, when I do this to a girl that I like, it either scares the shit out of them, or they are into it. But when they are no longer into it, it kind of makes me feel like they have invalidated everything I have ever put out into the world. I know that this is wrong, and it’s probably not true, but it just feels like every time I make a connection with a girl I like, I have to spend SO LONG trying to pick up the pieces of my life again if it doesn’t work out. With Her it took me months, with the crazy one it took me a couple weeks, who knows how long this one will take.

I know I’ll get over it. I know I’ll be fine. But I don’t know when I’ll be happy again.

I just want to be happy again. I just want someone to love again. I just want to be loved again.

I really, really just don’t want to feel so alone.

/end emotional rant and while fest