Don’t face me. Stay right where you are. I have perceived judgement. Not by you. But by your family. Your mother to be specific. Of course, I didn’t hear her say anything. I just heard you on the other end: “Well, I like her.”
Sure you came to my defense. Sure you came to my defense. Sure you came to my defense. But what am I to do with all this animosity I already feel.
Don’t you see? I’m sensitive. My emotions flare up like the herpes virus. Certain emotions highjack my brain. And certain emotions have highjacked my brain for as long as I can remember. If I could run halfway up the stairwell, bury my face in my arms and have a meltdown, I would. I would do to you what I did to my mother whenever she wagged her finger at me for attempting to interrupt her while she was on the phone: I would punish you.
My M.O. seems to be this: If you don’t want me, then I don’t need you. As a matter of fact, fuck you. Go fuck yourself. You’ll pay for this. You’ll wish I wanted to interrupt you.
Because I am sensitive, I do not take rejection well and I perceive rejection everywhere. Even when I know better, even when your opinion or your mother’s opinion means nothing to me, even when I know how wonderful I am and that their opinion is more a reflection of them than of me, you can all go fuck yourselves. Now watch close (or don’t) as I divest from you emotionally. What do I care?
You’ll never know how much. How sensitive I am. How badly I take rejection. You’ll never know, and here’s why:
I am so bad at taking rejection that I overcompensate by inviting it. To make up for the fact that I care so goddamn much about what you think, I will take it like a champ. I will never waiver in your presence from the image of strength and maturity that you have for me. That is a key feature of the spite house that I will build for you. You will never even know just how badly you hurt me. You will never know just how cruel I can be. All you will suffer from is a lifelong sense of loss while I continue to fortify your romanticized view of me as someone who is strong, enigmatic and intangible.
Meanwhile, I will secretly write a manifesto rescinding my love of you, denouncing my need for you. The manifesto will say something along the lines of, go fuck yourself. I should have never given you the opportunity to hurt me and now that I am hurt, I will deprive you of all future opportunities to do so.
One wall, two wall, old wall, new wall. I will build a fortress of walls around myself. Around Alex. The girl you didn’t even realize you knew will stay hidden from you forever more, and always out of reach.
I don’t need an advice column by Cheryl Strayed to tell me that I am being immature. I already know that it’s unfair for me to treat you this way. You don’t deserve this. You came to my defense and you’ve only ever supported me.
I know that it is my job, as an adult in pursuit of healthy, functional relationships, to short-circuit my childish sensitivities. So that is what I, here, am doing. “Channeling,”—as they say—my emotions. Turning my petulant, reactionary, sensitive, vindictive, destructive, fuck-you, go-suck-a-dick, middle-finger, tongue-out, nuclear meltdown levels of rage into something “productive.”
Thanks to me, you’re welcome.