Shamefully independent

Crushing, crippling, 
My strength faltering
The comfort of being alone
Punctured with devastating loneliness.

Strength and growth
Torn down, shredded
Revealing the little girl
Left alone in the playroom.

Big feelings in an
Enlarged body
Constrained by expectations
And self-hatred.

Can anybody save her
Amidst the shame of dependence?
How singular her desires
For a forever partner.

In which, I Potato.

There’s a phrase called Jiak Kan Tang, meaning to eat potatoes. It’s used in slight mockery of those who were born Asian but are more westernised in thought and behaviour. That is to say, preferring potatoes over rice.

Potato is also a great meme for the awkward girl, potating away in potatoland, awkwardly poting about while embodying both the essence and physicality of the potato.

I’m both.

I believe it is this Potato Identity that has often left me in a perpetual state of singledom. Not just single and ready to mingle. Or even just single and happy. I’m just, potato. Even when I’m in a relationship, I’m just preparing myself to be launched from a potato missile into singlehood.

Bitter and mouth-curling when raw with emotions, crumbly and mushy when heated. God I’m such a potato.

True, a potato can be delicious, but it’s tiring just being seen as delicious when embellished with someone else’s favourite garnish or sauce. Then again, I wouldn’t have me raw, or cooked and plain.

Even when I do meet people who seem to like the potato that is me, all I can think about is: Why? Too many YouTube good channels have taught me that potatoes in their natural state or least worked on are the worst state of potating. They may insist they like a nice, steaming, clean baked potato, but all I see is the crumbly, dry rubble of my innards. Or perhaps they exclaim that they admire the intensity of my raw emotions, yet all I hear is that they enjoy the vulnerability, that they see me for the potential not yet achieved.

It’s easiest to say I do best when discarded, forgotten and left alone. You see buds sprouting in abandoned potatoes after all. Yet I can’t seem to realise that loving nurture, water and nutrients help me become a plant, not just the sprouting of some weak shoots that wilt in weeks.

As I long for the quiet, dark dirt to bury me in self-pity, self-hatred, and self-sabotage, I’m resigned to be dug up by sharp claws and snivelling snouts. When all you know are cuts and intrusive smothering, a gentle touch still feels like a shimmering bolt of lightning.

Oh my Potato self, oh Potato me. Won’t you allow him to hold and grow you into a green, leafy plant? Why do you revert to staying rooted in your ways?

Shifting plates

Swaying with the autumn wind,
Swept about with every gust
Never landing, never settling

So far from her branch
Broken off and now
Drifting along with the torrential tides high

Wave upon wave of uncertainty
Ripples of opinions
So far from the pebbly beach

Withdrawing after each crash
Each crush
Falling past the edge of cliffs

Down the rabbit hole
Through the clouds
Two feet always on shifting plates.

Understanding my fear of abandonment

Let’s break it down.

Fear of abandonment.
Afraid to be left behind, to be left alone, to be alone.
To be ignored.
Fear of neglect, silence, disregard.

Fear of a lack of care and concern.
Fear that I am unloved and unwanted.
Fear that I am not worth

attention
attraction
affection

Panic sets in with a fog of fury,
rage and discontent,
outrage and offence,
disbelief and shock.

Worry and anxiety
leading to a need for control
to “get them back”

win them back

their attention and attraction back
putting me once again at number one,
the only one,
nothing should precede me and what I mean to them.

Clingy, desperate, eager to please
yes yes yes to everything just to get a positive response,
to know I am wanted and desired again.
With that, I am therefore kept.

I won’t be alone and tossed aside and made worthless,
useless,
not worth time and effort or love.

Nothing else matters but them behaving as I wish them to be,
or even just how they were talking to me a couple minutes ago.
Even if I was the reason for the change in tone

because I suggested we slow things down
and they just leave me because I don’t want them

and they oblige instead of disagreeing and fighting for me

if they Do fight for me, they appear clingy and I get disgusted.

Ironic.

But when I do it, it’s the only thing that I can do. I can’t focus on anything else but trying to “get them back” and get things back to how they were, to being wanted and loved, to having them text me.

I don’t care that it’s 2am now compared to the 7pm then. That they have work tomorrow or are busy right now, even if they are showering. If they aren’t replying, that means they don’t want me anymore and they might even hate me and are going to ignore me and give me the silent treatment and pretend I do not exist.

 

 

My mom gives me the silent treatment and pretends I don’t exist when she’s angry at me.

When I do something wrong, my parents tell me what a disappointment I am, that their years of bringing me up was for nothing because I ended up like this. It was a waste of their time and effort raising me up, useless to have done anything to have loved me.

They said cruel things like I am the worst child, that I am nothing if my mother dies, that they won’t care if I live or die and I can go and die for all they care.

When they get angry at me, I feel like the worst, cruelest human being on earth, that I don’t deserve to have lived and I am evil. Ungrateful, evil, worthless, not worth being looked at or talked to, mentioned by name or acknowledged as a living being. I become nothing. Ranted about in the third person behind closed doors but with loud petty voice who intend for me to hear everything, yet not worth the effort nor for my existence to be acknowledged by even talking about me in front of me and having me be seen.

 

I would watch as they argued and my dad would blame my mom saying she was at fault for everything, while she told him how useless he was.

I listened and took it in too, because it would be used on me too, the same words. Taught not to get a man like my father, here are all the things NOT to get in a man. Anyone who looked at me and called me beautiful and took what I told them, repackaged and gave it back to me, paid me a smidge of attention, was worth my world. Sad.

I accepted these guys though I knew they weren’t good people or healthy for me because I accepted that my worth was that of being second choice. Never first. That’s why all the married men. Justifying with open marriages is but a weak way to assert my false self-worth to stubborn ol’ me. That’s why till now, part of me thinks that my exes’ breaking up with me because I wasn’t worth being the only one when he was still so young, and not talking to me for a whole week (radio silences) because studies > talking to me, which he felt were tedious like updating his life to a jail warden, are somehow justified.

Why should I be afraid to have them not text back or initiate conversations, to have other people in their lives that aren’t me, or not prioritize me over every and anything. That’s so needy. So dependent. I am worth so so much more.

It’s just not apparent enough to myself just how much I’m worth though.

 

Gotta fix the two of them. Self-worth tied to fear of abandonment, and I have to work on them or I will fall forever into this tar pit of murky, cloying desperation and fear, neediness and full-blown panic attacks, extreme behaviours and controlling habits.

3rd Nightmare in a row

I wouldn’t say it was a nightmare as Hollywood imagines it. No scary monsters, no sudden ghost or monster popping up and scaring me awake – though I had one a couple months back, had to get a hug in the middle of the night from fear – but these three nights have been filled with nightmares that are intensely stressful scenarios.

I dreamt of Chris last night. I was out with friends at… a park of sorts. He was across the lake, or on the lake canoeing. He was bigger, more muscular to an extent but clearly denser and wider. His hair was a crazy afro mess. It was uncomfortable seeing him walking around constantly flexing his biceps. He came over, sat down, and tried to be conversational with everyone, but me. Stares of pity filled the table and I sat in quiet discomfort, minimal eye contact and stiff body posture. Finally got up and left, half running away from him. From them.

He follows, so what else can I do but hop onto the train and hope to lose him? He follows.

Next thing I know, I’m in a courtyard, and using a balloon float up towards a flaky pastry cloud, coasted with sugary gloss like Ritz’s Strudels. I’m not just literally running away from my problems, I’m flying away from it. He becomes Jon in how I was going to find him at his place, but it’s complicated to journey there.

Then I’m at my booth, my magazine’s booth. But who are these girls selling our magazine’s stuff? We have merchandise… we have MERCHANDISE? These girls are punks, they don’t care for the magazine, they don’t care for the store. Why are they here, what’s happening. I take charge and give notes on what needs to be rearranged and sold and explained or given descriptions. Nothing, they listen to nothing and no one.