Not wanting to go into details, but let's just say I never had a good childhood growing up, I wished I had a father to love me, and I wished I did not remember vividly how wounds could scar you both mentally and physically.
But I pulled through it. At first, I cheated by putting up a front, which was strong as an iron cast, and somehow along the way I did managed to be strong. If not for myself, then for my family and handful of friends who cares but somehow not that enough for me to dare to offload my burdens and insecurities onto them.
I still have my little outbursts that I could not help. You know those little wooden, hollow birdies that catches water dripping from a source above, and when they are full, they would tip to one side to deposit the collected water? I feel like one of those, needing to have an outlet to deposit all that burden, except that everytime I come back up, I'm still half-filled with water.
I've never been a very good friend. When I was younger, I remembered giving up my last dollar just to make my friends happy, as I did not know what it took to let them know I cared, thus I did it with money and being there as much as I could. Nobody taught me how to be a caring, good friend, because I have never had one, not for a very, very long time.
Alas, time lapsed, and I inevitably grew jaded and cynical, and I thought, "Jen, other people do this more competently than you do. You're nobody's best friend. You're just a good friend, you're just there. You're just not made for this shit. So why bother so hard and make yourself miserable?" The damage was done.
Besides, flattering words were, no, ARE something that always have been a problem getting past my lips. If they weren't deserved, I couldn't force myself to dole it out. Human beings would always prefer verbal assurance of friendship and loyalty, and I guess I do too, but I just couldn't do that. I mean, I would try to express with a hug and physical touch, but since when was that ever enough? I suppose that's the consequences you would have to face, when you are too fucking chicken to choke the words out, for fear that they would get thrown back in your face.
For if that happens, that would be the proverbial straw that breaks the camel's back. And I'm too much of a coward to be able to stand that, even when I see my friends preferring others over me. I'm still in the group, sorta, but not really.
I'm standing on the sidelines, occasionally trying to step into the spotlight, with a well-placed self-derogatory poke at my own expense, or, hah, trying to be the all-knowing One, just so that, my friends might look upon me with a little more respect, a little more awe, earning a little more placement in their hearts. Nonetheless though, the slightest self-doubt would have me scurrying back into the shadows. Even so, I'm not even ready to let go of that slight comfort that I still have a line to toe about.
That's when I decided that I would still try, but nothing's going to make me try as hard anymore. I looked at everything through reinforced glass coating my eyes and my heart, and I tried not to let them get in that easily.
But sometimes, all it took for an impenetrable fort to fall, is the tiniest, unexpected peg taken to it. It would start off with a small chip in the wall that you would ignore, but the cracks would soon spread through out the walls, and before you know it, they fall, and your emotions are not longer safe.
I still try. I still try, because, no matter how cynical I am about life, I'm still a human being, deep down to the core. I don't want to feel lonely. I'm afraid of being lonely. I am lonely. I don't know what to do with this loneliness. I'm scared. And it's this innate fear that had me struggling to float to the surface to take a life-enforcing breath, to not collapse when a weaker version of me would have given up years ago. I'm determined to not sink and drown.
Not yet.
I wish I could be at peace. I wish I can write happy poems, and painless thoughts, for once. I wish, I wish I did not have this capacity to feel so so much for people and everything around me. I wish, that I can truly have someone who loves me because I'm me, not because I'm so-and-so's friend, or because I am willing to do something for them. I wish I was someone's closest and best friend, not in the whole wide world, but at least in the group; I thought I had that for awhile, but I got replaced since last month. I deserved it, though.
I wish I can find someone who loves Jennifer Lim, just because. But then again, who can? It will be so much work, trying to break through my walls and insecurities. Even if or when they do, the results wouldn't be rewarding. Any slightest shit will get my hackles up again, and it just would not be worth the efforts.
I wish I knew for sure who I really am inside. Sometimes I feel I've turned so vile that I'm afraid to psychoanalyze myself. I just feel like I'm slowly stripped of my identity and I'm not sure if I have any idea what I have become.
I hope I would not have to hate myself if I manage to discover that one day. Because if that happens, I would truly have no one.
I hate being helpless, but that's what I am right now. I'm scared, I'm scared shitless.
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