Someone made me their home

I spent so much of my relationship protecting someone from their nightmares, from their fears. I was consumed with care for another. I was a lioness for someone. I protected, I encouraged, I loved. I loved in every way i thought humanly possible. In every way I never saw. Because I believe they are deserving of it. I bared my soul to another, completely. Something i have always been willing and ready to do, always will be, with love. With every growing fear they had, i made sure they felt seen, secure. I made someone my home, or rather they made me theirs. Using me as a shield— guarded and sheltered from their storms.

Meanwhile I was drowning in a monsoon of my own life. Choked, unable to ever hold in air, to ever take a full breath. It was all consuming. At the same time feeling like the most undeserving of that love reciprocated.

I felt I was always too much. That my baggage carried weight that was too heavy for another to bear with me.

Who wants to love someone like me, i thought. A scattered mind, a heavy familiar past and present. Someone who gets bored of stagnant thoughts, too easily. Someone who wants to yell the lyrics of all the music of their childhood, words of songs where they felt the least heavy in life. Someone who is prone to emptiness, who craves absurdity. Someone who wants passion and lust and love. Who knows how to give it but not receive it, or doesn’t feel worthy of it. Someone who feels lost if they are not constantly stimulated or moving. Someone who has endured violence, who has seen abuse, felt it, and been forced to carry it.

Who wants to love someone with a million emotions, a million thoughts racing each other for space in their own mind. Reaching for solace that has always felt unattainable to them.

Someone abandoned.

I carry that weight alone. Every fear, every nightmare, every panic, every angst. I carry it alone, I carry it for others.

I move through the world holding a smile of hope, if only as a mask, without it I am dead. Putting that mask on to carry on.

Ive been to the darkest depths of my own soul, and still i am searching. Ive searched for happiness my entire life.

I’ve been consumed with not feeling. Ive done things to numb all the pain i carry. Ive felt like I couldn’t go on. Ive used drugs to detach from reality, sex to feel indifferent. Ive done things to completely immobilize my thoughts. All while craving to feel real.

Endlessly baring the weight of others.

Blood family has shown me what addiction is like, what emotional detachment looks like, what being consumed by the wrong things feels like, and what its like to try and escape the world.

I’ve felt used and abandoned. Someone made me their home and showed me just how easy it is to feel alone, like ive always been. How undeserving ive felt of having my own home. I was shown that this weight is mine alone to carry. I am not someone who will ever need anyone to carry this weight, i am not someone who will throw it on anyone. I know now that if they do not feel able to, they cant, they wont. I should not stay hoping one day they see i truly cant, that i am constantly drowning.