"Please love me," I want to quietly plead.

"PLEASE LOVE ME" I want to scream at the top of my lungs.

"Please.  Love me."
I want to beg over and over and over again.

What a nightmare it is, to be living out your worst fears.

That you're too much.
That notifications from you are an annoyance.
That you're broken, because you're not happy enough, or because you're depressed all the time.
That promises made to you are not worth keeping, because you aren't worth the effort.

Living the majority of your life on your best behaviour, because being "good" and doing the right thing is what makes you worthy of loving.
Not for being who you are.
No, that's not enough.
You have to follow the rules, you have to put on a smile, you can't feel any "bad" things, you basically have to be perfect to be worth loving.

And then someone comes along who seems to be different.
Someone who cares for you immediately, without even really knowing you.
And then, as they continue to get to know you, they still care.
You haven't - by some miracle - scared them away by being yourself.
Instead, they seem to find your weird quirks and general strangeness...enduring.
They seem to love you for simply you being you.

Flaws, darkness, and all.

You think 'this can't be real.'

After all, no one can really love you for being just yourself.
But you take a deep breath, decide it's worth the risk, and allow yourself two things you never allowed yourself before:
To feel.
And to love without abandon.

After time, like most things in your life, things change, and you're proven right.

It's not worth it to feel.
And you truly are not worth being loved for who you are.

All the promises made.
All the nice words of saying that you'll work through things together, of saying that you're worth loving even if you never change, of saying that you're the love of their life...

and when things get difficult, when the guilt becomes too much to bear, instead of digging in to fight through it, to prove you're worth fighting for, they throw in the towel.

Guilt, I've come to notice, drives people one of two ways.
The first is that it becomes too much.  It's too heavy, it smothers, and because it becomes unbearable to them, and they don't have the skills to cope, they give up.  They quit.
The second, is that they see guilt as the sign of showing them where they can do better, be better.  Instead of quitting, they use the coping skills they have learned, to drive them to actually improve, so that guilt no longer has a hold on them.

My worst fears - and truly, things I have known my whole life, but have hoped against hope they weren't true - have been confirmed.

I am not enough.
I am not worth fighting for.
I am not worth loving.

What is even the point of staying alive, of bothering to try, when the truth has been so solidly confirmed?

You put your entire self out there, you thought - for once in your life - you were finally enough.
Just you.
No skills, no bribes, no gifts.
Just your own self.

And you were wrong.

You are too much.
You are not enough.
You are not worth the effort of loving.

We are all going to die someday.
Why not just speed up the process, and just get it over with?

This pain and hurt and confusion is not worth it.

I am not nearly as intoxicated as I wish I was.
To numb out the pain.
To make writing and processing this easier.

Do you know what a tremendous amount of hurt comes from facing the fact that the person who was supposed to be your person, doesn't want to talk with you?  Doesn't want to hear from you, thinks notifications of your texts are just another annoyance, that you aren't worth giving the time of day.

What did I do wrong?

I cannot express what it feels like to have some of your worst fears become reality; that you aren't worth loving, you aren't worth fighting for, that you're too much, that you're annoying, that you aren't worth loving.

My whole existence is a joke.

Ignored for the majority of my life except for when I misbehaved or didn't live up to the standards of those around me.
Ignored when I'm with friends, when I start to answer a question, only to be interrupted in the middle of it, and forgotten.
Overruled by my family members who, when I talk about things that I think about myself, or things that may be true about me, are ignored and/or rejected because clearly they know better than me (right?).
Ignored by the one who was supposed to be on my side, be my teammate, be with me through good and bad, because he doesn't like me for me, or wants anything to do with me, and has become completely apathetic to the struggles I face with mental health.

I am worthless.

I am not worth loving.
Not worth sticking around for.
Not worth anything.

I can't believe I fooled myself into thinking otherwise, even for a short while.

Idiot.

 I hate autumn.

I didn't always used to.
In fact, more than 10 years ago, if asked "what's your favourite season?" I would have answered without thinking: "fall."
But ever since she died, I have hated this time of year.

Fall used to be something I looked forward to.
The cozy warmth of the house in the morning, contrasted by the crisp, cool air as soon as I stepped outside to head to school.
The concept of fall foliage, sights fulfilled by pictures online, as I lived and grew up in an area where things stayed green year round (despite cooler weather during the cold seasons).
The smell of chimney smoke from houses as they warmed the evenings with a fire, ours included.
Grabbing apples off the tree in our backyard, biting into their crisp and tart flesh, the taste bringing a small moment of joy to remind me that this is what life is about.

Autumn brings nostalgia.
I don't know why; but it always has for me.
And before, nostalgia used to be my friend.
I used to fondly remember things in my past, used to love the comfort it brought when I reflected on anything and everything.

Now it's my enemy, and the only thing it gifts me is heartache.

So whenever the season of fall arrives and is in full effect, nostalgia arrives with it, and so does the heaviness of things I'd rather forget.

Being where I (geographically) am now, it's worse this year.
If you had asked me a couple months ago, I wouldn't have been able to tell you why.
But I have realised why the autumns in the past three years were much more bearable.

For one, I lived in an area where the fall season actually happened. 
Same cool, crisp air mornings, but accompanied by trees that actually changed with the season.
(Beauty in nature does wonders for the soul.)
But I was also with someone who, for a time, made life better.
And the combination of those two things, somehow made the bitterness and heartache of the fall season something I was able to completely forget.

Now I am both without that person, and in a place where fall - although it still occurs out this way - is not as prominent.

I am not okay.
And I just want this all to end.

Ten.

Ten years.
I cannot believe it has been ten years already since she passed from this world.

(And how appropriate that the year that marks 10, is the year the one person in my life who promised to stay by my side for better or for worse, made a decision to leave me.)

I hate July.
I've hated it for 10 years now, and over time, as other awful things have occurred in this month, it's just increased my hatred of it.
Even more so, now, because the one "good" thing that happened this month a few years ago, has now become another bitter taste in my mouth.

How is it that so many years have passed already, and yet the grief still feels like a fresh wound within my heart?

How is it that I still can't speak or talk of her death because it's too difficult, it pains me too much, and at any moment I'll start crying because it still hurts too much?

How is it that for all this pain that I feel, I feel like such a fake, because it's not as though I was any closer to her than anyone else in the family?

I may have an answer for that one, at least.

I was talking with my therapist about this last week, and mentioned how this month it's 10 years.
And how I feel like a fraud, because it's not as though I was incredibly close with her.
But in discussing my childhood, and how I was often over at her house growing up, because my siblings didn't want to/couldn't put up with me when my parents would go out of town for business, my therapist helped me make the connection that at her house, it was a place where I got positive attention from an adult.
Rather than the majority of the attention I received at home being negative, because I was the youngest in a large family, and if I had attention on me, it was most likely from doing something wrong or bad and I was in trouble.

So being at her house a lot, was a good thing for me.
Because it was an adult in my life who gave me positive attention, rather than negative attention.
She was basically like a third parent, raising me, with how much I was over at her house compared to my siblings.

...I took her for granted.
I was young and stupid and thought some of the things that she thought were dumb or outdated.
I didn't appreciate that she took care of me so much growing up.
I wasn't mature enough to have conversations with her about her life growing up, or faith, or anything more serious.
And for as much as she took care of me and loved me, I didn't allow myself to open up to her, or let myself be truly vulnerable around her.

But she still loved me.
She loved all of us.  With her whole heart.
She cared for us, celebrated alongside us, supported us, loved us.

And I took all of that for granted.

Her last words to me were "be good."

I think if she saw me now, saw how my life has turned out, she would be ashamed of me.
(I'm ashamed of me.)

I remember after she died how I would have dreams of her being alive again.
And one dream, more than any of the others, has stuck with me, even though at this point it's been over 7 years since I dreamed it.
I dreamed she was in the process of dying again, but somehow got better, and was alive for several more years...
And how my heart broke when I woke up from that dream, only to remember that it wasn't real, and she wasn't alive still.

I have not been good since she passed.
I haven't been outright evil, but I have done things I shouldn't.
Things born of hurt and pain and confusion.
Things I aimed for because I was tired of being hurt and not mattering to anyone.
Things I thought were better to aim for (at the time) because I wasn't going to walk around vulnerable and open anymore.

And that has only led me to where I am now.
Decisions that were made without enough knowledge to know any better.
The decision to risk being vulnerable again, to risk feeling things, to risk loving even though I knew the potential of hurt that can happen because of love...only to be hurt deeply and repeatedly.

I wish I could go back and do it all over again.
To be better prepared for her death.
To actually try and be good like she told me to.

Maybe then I wouldn't be here.
Maybe then I wouldn't have sunk into this depression that has lasted for the past 10 years.
Maybe then my grief wouldn't feel so unbearable, and this hurt would be a little less.
Maybe then I would have sought out the answers to know what I didn't know before, to make better decisions.

But I can't go back.
I can't bring her back to life.
I can't fix my brain.
And I certainly can't force the person who was supposed to be by my side in life to love me in all my brokenness.

My heart hurts so much.
All this grief is so heavy.
And I am so tired of bearing all this weight.

Two things I can say for certain:
I am glad she is not here to see what a mess and disappointment I have become.
And I am glad she is no longer suffering.

 'How did this all go wrong?'
I keep asking myself over and over and over again.
...I feel like I'm living in a nightmare that I won't ever wake up from.
Granted, I have felt that way on and off for the past couple of years (more on than off, truthfully), but right now more than ever.

My whole world feels like it got turned upside-down and flipped inside-out.

And of course, as usual, all the blame falls on me.
After all, why wouldn't it?

I'm the one who issued the ultimatum.
I'm the one who [supposedly] decided not to go to the same destination.

It's me.
Everything is always my fault.

I can't believe I thought I was loved for who I was.
I can't believe I thought I wouldn't have to face life alone; that I would have someone by my side to help me face the hard times...that we would face the hard times together.
I can't believe I thought I found someone who cared about me.
I can't believe I imagined having a shared future with someone who has made it clear that most things between us are not actually shared.

...

No one prepares you for life the way you need to be prepared for it.
And maybe it's a generational gap.
Maybe in years past it was implied.  Or something.
But growing up, it was "don't have sex before marriage" and "they have to believe in God."
There was little to no other direction other than that.
(Much less explanations for why and how it should be that way.)

Hindsight is 20/20, right?

Now I get why pre-marital counselling is important.
Now I get why people say to have the hard conversations about deal breakers early on.

I'm sure if those things had happened when they should have, I wouldn't be here now...
Broken.
Hurt.
Devastated.
Confused.
Betrayed.
Abandoned.
And who knows what else.

Who even knows what I'm feeling, because I don't.
To think I thought someone was worth the risk of allowing myself to feel.  To be vulnerable.  To trust.
What a fool I have been.

It's time to go back.
To not feeling.
To not being vulnerable.
To not trusting.

I'm tired of being played the fool.
Of being proven insane, because over and over I try the same thing, expecting different results, and only getting the same results as before.

Why should I try when I'm the only one?
It's taken too long, and has shown no change, no fruit, no evidence that any effort other than mine is given.

I am such an idiot.

And I hate myself for it.

I hate myself for not seeing things sooner.

And for someone who is repeatedly accused of being "negative" and a "pessimist," well, I sure have fucking proved that wrong, by hoping for something different over and over and over again.

Pessimist my ass.

How could I be so stupid.
And so trusting.
Even though over and over again I've been shown not to trust what I'm told.

I've known for years that I hate myself.
But now?

Now, I hate myself even more.