About a boy

Yes, I'll be cliche. God, I feel so lame getting upset about this. Am I in high school or something? Sure feels like it, and yet I'm a grown ass woman. I'm old enough to know that I should be upfront, and yet here I lay, keeping my mouth shut. Why? Because I'm so damn insecure. He's even giving me signs of being interested, clear signs. But for every real sign he's given that he's interested there's an imaginary sign that he's not. I know I'm being crazy, but I can't help myself. The problem is that this guy is exactly what I've been asking for, not necessarily in the physical sense but his personality. He's passionate, independent, not even remotely clingy, he always has a positive attitude, sometimes he laughs so hard he actually doubles over or falls to the floor. I love that. The funny thing is that I want to feel this way, I want to pine and wish because there's an optimism to it. I feel hope, but I also feel so insecure and unsure of myself that it's driving me mad. I know there's no rush, and I'm fine waiting. I just don't want someone else to come along and scoop up this great guy away from me because she's secure in herself and I'm a lame duck just floating along hoping he doesn't lose interest.

Intro

Someone once accused me of being perfect. This was many years ago and I should have moved on by now, but it still haunts me that people see so little of me that they think I'm anywhere near perfection. I'm an erratic piece of shit. I'm insecure, deceptive, indecisive, flaky, shallow, impatient, and sometimes I screw with people just because I want them to feel a small amount of the pain I live with every day. I hate myself, and I know for a fact I'm not the only one. I've been betrayed by everyone I had ever loved, starting with my parents. My abusive father and lying mother, each putting their own needs above mine when I needed them most. My brother sexually assaulting my best friend, my sister nowhere to be found, and my best friend, along with her family who I thought of as my own, deserted me. At first I refused to think I was the problem. This all happened when I was so young, maybe it was them, maybe the world was against me. But it kept happening. My first boyfriend, my college friends, the love of my life even... all ended up leaving. Maybe I pushed them away, but that's my point. It's not them, it's me. The problem can't be ALL OF THEM. It makes so much more sense for the problem to be one person, one eternal child who never learned how to be self reliant. Someone who is trying to learn that now. It hurts, not knowing what it's like to be truly loved, to be put first by anyone. I never realized how selfish we all are. I tried to be responsible for everyone else's happiness, forsaking my own with the thought that someone someday would come along and take care of me. That never happened and here I stand, alone because I'm tired of being taken advantage of. And yet I'm "perfect." I hate that word, I wish it could be stricken from out vocabulary, out of every language that had ever existed. How amazing would it be if such an ideal were never put in our heads? If we never looked for the perfect job, the perfect house, or the perfect man. What if all we ever searched for was "decent" or "acceptable." Would life be better then? I'm glad, in a way, that people can't see the piece of shit that I am. At least I can make a friend when I need to, even though I know they won't stick around forever. I can be charming, I can smile and make jokes, laugh at even the worst attempts at humor. I can put on the facade of "happy go lucky" and you'll never know what lies beneath.