I Don’t Need You To Save Me

I know you want me to confide in you. You want to be the one I finally go to. It’s your own inadvertent sexual fantasy. Save the manic pixie girl with a depressing backstory, make her realize there is more to life; be that one person I can finally trust. That is what’s getting you mentally hard. You want to be that climax for my teen movie irl. You want to be special, and you’re using my situation to make you so. Let me tell you though, that isn’t how it works. Believe me, you’re not the first to want to do all that, and believe me I’ve made so many mistakes before thinking that I wanted to be saved by someone.

But you actually don’t want this…

I get it. Something fucked up happened to me. Something mind numbingly terrible happened way before it should have happened. I was too young. I was at the age where I really needed to have a secular family and a normal upbringing, but I didn’t. Someone in my family died. That is what happened. My parent died when I was a kid and I get that it’s sad, and no, I am not “over it”. I’ll never be “over it”. But let me tell you something, you don’t have a role in my story.

Because it isn’t what you expect…

You’re never over grief. Grief is like carving a whole into your chest with that rusty exacto knife that has been sitting on your desk for so many years. Each time you’re reminded how much your life is different now you dig in deeper shredding every muscle and infecting every blood vessel in its path and you have to continue through that pain cause it is the best substitute for loss. That blade is always serrated, so all that is left is a hole of what was once there. Grief is about living with the gore, the blood and the pain. It is about morphing all of that into the new and fucked up “you”. That is a short version of what grief is and despite all this information you still can’t understand what I’m going through.

I am not going to cry when you ask how I am doing cause if I did, you would realize how you don’t want to deal with that and frankly, I won’t cry for you on command. I’m not going to tell you about all the tragedy and sadness and tears because let me tell you; you wouldn’t know how to respond. I’m not going to tell you how unsettling this new life is and how I am learning to grow with this new life given to me because you would see that as uncaring. It doesn’t mean I’m not grieving anymore; it’s just that I am not a show for you.

You really don’t understand…

See, don’t try to tell me how “you relate” cause your mom/dad left you when you were a kid. That’s not that same. That’s never the same. It sucks for you but I don’t understand that. I have no way of relating to that. My parent wanted to be a parent, yours didn’t. My parent had hopes of seeing me graduate, get married and have children, yours didn’t want any of that. I have to grow up knowing that I can’t share that experience with them. You have to grow up with something completely different, which I don’t get and frankly can’t identify with. No one knows what your parent wanted, cause he or she wasn’t there. I’m sorry but it’s true.

And see; don’t try to think that you understand because of that “five stages of grief” we all grew up with. There isn’t any order in grief. It is like rebuilding a broken tower when all you have is water. There isn’t a pattern of how you should feel; there isn’t a right or wrong way to feel lost and alone.

And see, when I refer to you, I mean just that, you. No, you might not have done this physically to me, and no, I might not fucking know you, but you are going to be or have been at fault to someone like me. If you do know me, you have done one of these things to me. Believe me, I never forgot.

Don’t feel bad, because I’m ok…

Despite of what I’ve written so far I don’t hate you. I’m just trying to explain the realities of our future. I don’t need you to be unhappy when I talk about her. Don’t have that face of pity and think my situation is miserable. It’s not quite as black and white as that. When I tell you a story about her I am proud of the fact I was there to live it. I’m also telling this story for simply that, a story. I am not subconsciously asking you to feel sympathy for me. All I want you to do is to listen. Yes I lost a parent, but I’m not asking for help. Don’t worry though, it’s actually a good story.

True, what I experienced will never be cured, but that’s ok. Sometimes the bad things that have happened in your life are ok, the worst kind of ok. I don’t want you to feel sad for me. My life has changed, but I have learned to live with the scars, just like how you learned to live with yours. Just cause we haven’t dealt with the same shit, it doesn’t mean our individual issues didn’t happen. We all have our burdens to bear, it doesn’t mean that one is better than the other; everyone’s problems can rightfully weigh them down.
There might be a time when I would feel like you are ready to hear my story where I tell you about the tears and the loneliness and the many MANY hours in which I regret not living life to the fullest with her. There might be a time where I might break down and explain how scary it was growing up with that sudden shift of that family dynamic. There might be a time where I might detach myself from you because its close to the anniversary and I just don’t want to function.

If that time comes, just be there, that’s all I really want. I don’t need your sympathy and I don’t want you to look at me differently. I am still me and you are still you and that’s fucked up in the best and worst ways possible. When that time comes please realize I have done this on my own, and I have done it on my own for years, so I’m good. I might have not done it perfectly, but I like how it turned out and I think she would have liked it too.

So don’t think you need to save me, cause I did it myself.