Oy!

Oh, shit. I just found out something about my relationship with Jake that I swore would never happen. I became dependant on him. Fuck!

I don’t know how it happened. He and I were talking last night and it came around to what if something was to happen to us. If taking a break would be good for us right now or not. I said that I would not hold him back if he wanted to take a break, but I wasn’t sure if I would take him back. He asked me why, and I said it was complicated. I tried to explain, I really did. The way I explained it was this:

To me, Jake is everything. He is the air I breathe and the water I drink. He is the food I eat and the thoughts I think. Imagine if a piece of you were torn out, left jagged and rough. It wouldn’t be able to heal because you wouldn’t know if the piece that was torn away were coming back to you or not. So it would just stay jagged and torn, never healing. That’s what a break would be like. And that’s not something I could do because I couldn’t handle it. Its either we're together or we're not. There is no in between. And as I was saying this, I realized exactly what I was saying.

Jake means too much to me. That’s not what I wanted. That’s not what I needed. And now I’m scared because I don’t know what to do. I can’t continue to be so dependant on him because that wouldn’t help either of us. But the only way I know how to fix it is to lose him. And I’m not ready for that either. I don’t think I’ll ever be ready. Because I really do think that he and I are meant to be together. I think that he is my soul mate, my life mate. Or as spirit describes it, my ‘twin flame’. We’re too connected to become ‘just friends’ and too connected to just drop each other totally. But I think I’ve found a solution.

Now that I’ve realized this problem, it can be fixed right? I mean, it’s not too late and I can figure out why this happened. I think it’s because I don’t have enough self esteem. My older brother always tells me that you have to love yourself before you can love anyone else. And that is very true. Two halves don’t make a whole when it comes to relationships. You must be whole unto yourself, and bring what you have to the table so that your strengths balance out the other’s weaknesses. But how do I love myself? I’ve spent a good part of my life hating myself, despising what I am and what I’ve become. This is so not what I wanted to be like in high school.

When I was little, I had this impression of me as this beautiful girl, walking down the hallway with friends all around me. I thought that I’d be the one to keep the peace between the preps and jocks and other groups. But as I got older, that impression faded into nothingness because I realized that I could never be that thin pretty popular girl in my dreams. Still, I think I still held onto it in the back of my mind. Otherwise I wouldn’t be able to bring it up now right?

Another thing is the fact that I never received any compliments as a kid. I didn’t get the whole ‘good job’ thing from my mom and dad. I didn’t know how to act as a little girl. I knew how to act as a little boy because I had a little brother. But when I started school, wait. Scratch that. That’s not right.

I remember that when I was in kindergarten, I got along great with my classmates. I made friends immodestly, and we would all share things and such. I remember that I would always be lending out my crayons to people. I was always the last person in line because I wanted to be. I remember that I hung out with kids like Shayla and Lindy. Two kids that became the most popular kids in my class. But that all changed when in 3^rd grade I went to the catholic school.

When I went to the catholic school it was like stepping into a whole new universe. Immediately I reached out for people that I didn’t recognize, thinking that maybe if I surrounded myself with them I could find friends. But that didn’t work, because the one other person in my class that was new already had friends. So I began to read a lot, and pulled back into myself. I remember I lied a lot. Attention, I guess? I’d lie to try to get out of assignments. I remember that I got caught one time, when I told my teacher that I didn’t get my homework done because I had to follow my mom to the emergency room. My mom was so mad at me, and I stopped lying. As much.

I still lie sometimes, I know. It’s something that comes easy to every human being. But I try to stick to the truth as much as possible. To be honest, I can’t remember the last time I lied.

Anyway, I think that’s when I became so enclosed. I would always read. And then when my mom died in March 2001, I drew into myself even more. I would hear my grandma say things about herself like ‘I’m so stupid’ and ‘I should just die’ and I would start to say the same things. Pretty soon, I believed them. Things like ‘I hate myself’ became part of my every day vocab. My grades slipped even farther than normal. I went from a B-C student to a C-D student almost over night. I just didn’t care. All I cared about was my books and my writing.

Then I remember, I met my sister. Elizabeth Radzinski. We met over Pokémon cards, I know. My first impression of her was ‘jez, what a snob!’ because of the way she dressed that first day of summer math class. But pretty soon we became close friends to the point where I was inseparable. With her, my confidence in myself boosted a little bit. But she created other flaws. See, she didn’t have that much. So I was always giving her. Food, shelter. Clothes, money for gas. It wasn’t her as much as her mother, Karen. Through them I think, I turned my compassionate nature against myself.

I entered high school, a little bit better than I was in grade school but I still hated myself. I thought myself as ugly, stupid. Then a boy named terry McClure stared paying attention to me. We started dating, and I soon thought myself as in love. But that was the farthest from the truth anyone could get.

In reality, my relationship with terry just deepened my dissatisfaction with myself. He would call me a whore, and I would believe him. He would say that he was the only one that would ever pay attention to me, and I believed him. I would believe anything. I would do anything. It got to the point where I wouldn’t wear anything but turtleneck long sleeved shirts. Baggy. The baggier the better. I stopped writing, a mistake I still regret to this day. He didn’t like something, so I cut it out. Even my best friend. He didn’t like her because she saw what I couldn’t see. And she tried to get me out of it. I just couldn’t see reason. He loves me, I would say. He really does care, he even uses a condom. ‘But he rapes you every night!’ she’d yell. It was mutual, I’d say. I’d deny rape until I turned into a junior.

I think that my relationship with him is what really fucked me up the most because of what he did to me. Things that I’ve never spoken of with anyone. Not even Lizz. Never Jake.