I'm loveable

Since before the turn of the century, I have been unable to listen to this song:



In the fall of 1997, my ex and I got back together for a spell. I was in his dorm room, on his bed and "Anytime" played on repeat while he made my body feel what it hasn't ever felt again. We slept in each other's arms - well, he slept. I listened to this song the entire night, staring at him sleep in the dark ... tracing his silhouette with my finger tips. In fact, I can still see him if I close my eyes and remember.

After all the nonsense that followed, I was unable to listen to this song. It filled me with intense sadness and would make my eyes well by the fourth beat or so. I have ALWAYS turned the station if the song came on.

I listened to the song today and its impact on me was gone. It's a sweet memmory now that makes me smile - now that I know he loved me like I loved him. I considered this newfound fact in light of something I have known for many years.

I never really felt worthy of love - of being loved. I knew my own propensity to FEEL love, but never really believed that it could exist in anyone else towards ME. If you've followed my writing in The Evolution of Indifference, you know that my mother's ambivalent attitude towards me and my knowing that she really didn't want me would contribute to my feeling that way. But when my first love rejected me ... well, I just knew that meant I wasn't loveable.

I can attribute my crass and insensitive nature to that one thing - that I just knew no one could love me because of something intrinsic, something within me that simply WAS me, that I couldn't change. But when he told me he loved me profoundly, had trouble getting over me for many years, all but chose a career based on who I was ... and that I would ALWAYS be his first love ...

Well, that has changed me - it has profoundly impacted my self image, and forever has changed my view of the past that until this week lack vibrancy and color. It existed in black and white, grainy like an old episode of the twilight zone on a black and white television with rabbit ears and knobs to turn the channels ... as if it were just about to go snowy and undecipherable.

I can now see me in vibrant color, in HD ... and I like what I see. I'm alive inside - an emotional Lazarus has shaken off his wrappings and is smiling at me, FROM within me. And folks - I really am loveable. I really am.

And not just that - but I've always been.

I sit here typing, remembering all of the problems I've identified in all the potential suitors I've blogged about ... and I know that it was all just my attempt to find an excuse not to let them in, and to continue my own self-fulling prophecy: that i'm not able to be loved.

But I am - and I *was* loved. And that means more to me than anyone can know. It instantly changed my view of my college experienced. It has ALWAYS been the dark dreary days of my life, and suddenly - I see and remember the good things ... like working at the writing center, like when he came in one day - scared me because I didn't hear him, and kissed me. I forgot about that. Or like when I was a freshman and my father just left - I loved the freedom at that moment. Or when I dressed up in drag for halloween, or the next year when I wore a big diaper and went as a baby, or when I saw Birdcage ... and even when I got an 87 when I took that calculus exam drunk ... when I didn't study at all for the Rigid Body Dynamics course and got 100. Or when I was so drunk I threw up over the railing outside my dorm - ahhh. Or when I was high and tried to climb the hill ... in the snow ... without gloves. It's amazing I still have operable fingers. Ahhhh yes - college. They WERE good years. They weren't bad, and I don't have to be so bitter anymore.

In short - I know I'll be more forgiving of imperfections, as I want a man who is forgiving of mine.

But that doesn't mean I won't put out and blog about it. It's an epiphany, not a castration!

DAMN