Fixing What I Didn’t Break

I pinned an older video on Instagram and TikTok (you can watch it in one of those places) of me talking about how I was realizing how I try to fix things I didn’t break. Always trying to protect people who have proven they don’t give a shit about me. Still caring for people who don’t even speak to me. Giving of myself in very personal ways to try to help someone else feel good and then receiving nothing in return.

Most people would recognize the pattern and pull back from someone who is using you or from groups of people who are demanding too much from you. But because of serious trauma going back to childhood… I cling in desperation. I can almost hear the child in me clinging and crying, “please, don’t leave me.”

But they leave anyhow. They always do. People forget I exist the moment something/someone more interesting comes along. I am there for people when they need me and then don’t even get a text to check in with me when my life is falling apart. I give parts of myself that are private for me and then I get blocked when I need reciprocal care.

I can’t make others value me, I can only work to value myself and choose to be around others who consistently PROVE they value me as well. Then I’m safe to give in those relationships the way that I do, fully and with genuine affection and deep care and feeling.

And as much as it hurts and as desperately as I want to cling and beg to not be rejected and abandoned again for things I can’t fix and messes I didn’t make… I won’t.

I’ll care for my friends when they need me, but they do have to care back when I need them.

I’ll cry with you, but you have to take notice of me when I’m crying too.

I’ll think of you when you’re not around, but you have to think of me too.

I’ll do anything I can to make you feel good and to ease your burdens, but I need the same because I’m a person too.

I’ll hold you through the storm, but you have to hold me back.

❤️❤️❤️