Love, (A Series)

5.26.16 // Love, An Invalidated Girl

What's it like to have your feelings, you dreams, your passions be constantly ridiculed and misunderstood? What's it like to have everything you believe in your heart, everything that has ever made you remotely happy in this godforsaken cruel world be so belittled that you are just so empty at the end of it all? What's it like to watch everyone else go unscathed by such judgment yet the moment you feel you have the choice to be unapologetically yourself, you are stripped of that right?

You see, I don't understand the purpose of invalidating everything that I am. Is it to make yourself feel better about yourself at my sad expense? Do you find joy in taking away the lights that warm me in the darkest depths of my conscious? Why, why do you feel the need to make it seem like my feelings don't matter, that nothing I do will ever measure up to your level of good enough? Penny for your thoughts: what does it feel like to completely silence someone else's happiness because it doesn't align with your own?

You know you've made it when you've become a careless joke told by the mouths of those who will never realize how fucking hurtful a string of words can actually be. A girl who is overly enthusiastic about loving things is somehow the most foreign of concepts. So foreign that instead of taking the time to understand, you decide to mock her instead. To tell her that "oh you're just going through another one of those phases aren't you? What's your current obsession that'll fade in two months time? Do you do anything else with your life besides being entirely consumed by so and so?"

Fun fact #1: Don't label my sources of happiness as "phases." I can't even begin to tell you how many times I've heard that everything I like is a phase I will get over. That not only trivializes the actual magnitude of how much these sources mean to me, but the fact that you're putting a deadline to them all is frustrating. It's like you're already seeing the end before it even begins and making it constantly and visibly known to me. To invalidate my happiness to the point where you are able to joke about "how long is she going to last with this band, this movie, this actor?" is so destructing. I didn't realize America's pastime was seeing how long a source of happiness can keep me happy. I hope you are in fact happy with this running joke because at least one of us is laughing at the end of the line. Fun fact #2: my life, as much as you think it does, does not revolve on one particular "obsession." It might be hard to realize that I am multidimensional and complex with gasp! more than one thing that occupies my mind. Maybe stop looking at my life with such a narrow lens that you can see I'm more than who I currently like or what I currently listen to.

It's become so incredibly damaging to continually be told that nothing you are, say or love is worth anything that I've learned to shut my mouth and hold my tongue. It's gotten that exhausting to deal with the persistent invalidation that I just choose not to be openly happy. And somehow I have to self sacrifice for the betterment of others. That I have to silence in order to escape the harsh judgments, the eye rolls and scoffs, the knives that stalk in the shadows ready to puncture if I speak. Sometimes I wished I had thicker skin. To scream fuck you to everyone denying me of something so simple: the right to be happy without repercussions. To deflect every bad word, the sharp cuts and still feel whole at the end of it all. But I was not built like that. I was built to be sensitive, to take it all to heart, to let myself surrender because losing is less painful than my continued attempts to be free.

So what if I like these things, these people that make me genuinely blissful? My happiness does not in any way affect the way you run your life so why can't you just let me live without the snide remarks? Are the things I put my entire heart into so threatening that you need to completely slash them before my eyes? Why do you care so much about me and the way I live that you need to make everything I feel and love so unimportant? Is your actual goal to destroy the human being inside of me because you're doing a pretty decent job at it if I were to tell you the truth.

And what after all of this? You've put a nice piece of duct tape over my mouth and that's another punchline isn't it? "You're not talking about them anymore? You're finally over them?" No you absolute shithead, I've grown so tired of publicly expressing my happiness that I choose not to divulge anything anymore. Why does it seem like I can never win? I talk about it; I get ridiculed. I don't talk about it; conclusions are being jumped like hurdles and that in turn brings about a second round of mockery. Must get exhausted for you to never take a break from deliberately hurting me doesn't it?

If you never wanted to hear about things that make me happy, don't ask. Don't give me an open invitation when it's actually a sword in disguise waiting to pierce me from the first word I utter. Because I will take it. I take it every single time because I love being able to openly express who I am. I love letting people know how happy I am because of certain things in life. I love sharing the passions and dreams that swirl in my mind. I love talking about my feelings to those who will genuinely care about them. But when you take advantage of my eagerness for your own self benefit that doubles as my self destruction, it's no longer fun. It's deteriorating.

Maybe one day all of these little things will not bother me. Maybe one day I'll gather enough courage to be myself in limitless ways. And maybe one day I'll find the acceptance from the people around me that not only allow me to be happy but encourage nothing less. And while I wait for that day, I'll continue to shelter everything that makes me whole close to my heart where no one but me can have the power to dictate how I choose to love them. Whether that be reduced to the silent whispers at night when the world is asleep or in the silent tears drowned out by shower streams, I will continue to love wholeheartedly. And if that means only I become aware about the happiness I possess and the sources that provide them, then I will have never been more complete.

Love,

An Invalidated Girl.