Too Much Attention Can Get a Girl

Sometimes I care too much about caring too much.

It’s really frustrating to me how easily my emotions can sway. How I can be so sure of something one minute – a situation, relationship, or choice – and then the most insignificant evidence to the contrary can shift my reality and throw me into a tailspin.

I’ve learned it’s Trauma’s way of keeping me safe — to contort me into whatever shape is least likely to harm me. I know it’s me, hyper-vigilantly searching for signs that I’m straying too far from inconspicuous. Too much attention can get a girl found out. Too much attention can get a girl in trouble. Too much attention can get a girl.

Today it was about speaking up about hurt feelings and then being yelled at because it’s so frustrating to not be understood. It was me getting too comfortable with being vulnerable and being reminded it can get ugly. I don’t do ugly in relationships; unless it is within my power and control.

Today it wasn’t. Today the ugly was directed my way and left me feeling like this relationship is never going to work, because I’m never going to work. I’ve been laying here for almost an hour trying to talk myself out making a run for it.

Because intellectually I know most of this is probably in my head. I understand that Trauma likes to translate for me, so I can fully grasp the weight of how awful it must be to love me. To just be grateful that anyone might.

Because Life has not-so-graciously prepared me for rejection; to fear abandonment around every corner. It’s only a matter of time before they’ll get sick of me – grow tired of how needy or emotional I am. Because CPTSD is the gift that keeps on giving.

I’ve always been too much of everything, and it has often been used as some sort of ‘get out of jail free card.’ They’ve tried to A, B, or C, but they just can’t handle me. I’m just too much, and it’s all my fault that they can’t stay.

And so I come to so many relationships as a glued-up broken doll; expecting to be played with until I break again. Until someone is too rough or careless with me and the glue just can’t hold all the pieces.

I don’t know how not to fear these things, and it’s exhausting to be in my head right now. I think I know what’s real and then, just like that, I’m jostled and a piece falls loose…and I scramble around trying to fix it before anyone can notice and leave.