Day 34

         You cannot earn love. You cannot capture it. It must be freely given and freely accepted. I have spent my entire life trying to earn the love of those around me. I beg, I plead, and still I feel empty. This has led me to feel resentful to those in my life. Why can they not love me as much as I love them? They are my world, yet I am insignificant to them. My own neediness has blinded me. In my search to feel loved, I have become a monster. Watch any super hero story unfold and you'll see that the villains are the way they are because they feel unloved. I feel unloved. That is why I always rooted for the bad guys. I related more to them than I ever have to any hero. I have let my own darkness consume me. I have become destruction.
          Tonight was the first night that I have looked into my own darkness. My anger, my resentment, my emptiness, my hurt. I am a hurt child seeking a parent's love, my father to be exact. Father issues seem so clique, they are however a fact of life. My father left me, I tried so hard for him to love me. In all honesty, though, I think he was incapable of loving anyone. He had his own father issues. I have to let go of the fact that I feel like it's my fault he left. I have to let go of feeling like I wasn't good enough. Because, it has absolutely nothing to do with my short comings and everything to do with his.
          Typing this even now, I am drawn to my destructive coping skills. This revelation is shaking the very framework of my personality construct, it was built to protect me. If I change this perception, everything changes. I make myself vulnerable, I change what I have built. I am still me on the inside, but others will perceive me as different, and my life will change, yet again. I will be consumed by my new life, and I fear losing me...or what was me. Now, I must be my true self. I must risk rejection and acceptance alike by breaking down my own barriers, and it is a frightening thing.

Lesson:

Love must be freely given and freely accepted.