I am boring and dumb

I’m boring and I’m dumb.

Why do you think that?

I must be. When I stop the engine stops. When I stop it stops, all of it. Always has.

What do you mean?

If I don’t reach out, there’s no relationship.

If I don’t do something, nothing moves.

If I stop, it stops. I don’t exist unless I’m moving. And if I stop, then what’s the point of everything?

Are you suicidal?

No. I’m not anything.

Where does this come from?

Contractual love. My guess.

Comparison. Constant unresolved comparison. Piecing together who I am based on where I slot into my mother’s comparisons.

For example, I am also ugly and meek

Why?

Because my sister was beautiful and strong. She was flawless. And she didn’t cry. Not even when she got a leg full of gravel, no tears. Applause. Applause for her.

And—

Wait, let me also chime in to say, it’s not like I believe my sister was unharmed by our upbringing. She was.

You don’t have to justify it—

But I do. I always have. If I look at how I feel without justifying how she feels, then I get punished.

“Well, what do you think she’s feeling?” Was subtly implied whenever I brought up my feelings. Oh, okay. I cannot feel without considering how she or you or anyone else feels, too.

Her eyes would bore into me, “Melllll. Come on…”

Selfish. I am also selfish.

What do you think that was?

I don’t know. I can guess. I can guess it was my mom’s way of trying to ensure I didn’t cause a stink. Keep me in line. And it worked.

If I never had my daughter I’d probably still be married and they’d still be telling me what to do and how to feel and when to feel bad for them.

And now?

Now I stand in my shower and watch the water run down the walls, and the way it beads on my hands I haven’t looked at, really, in years, and wonder if this is what I was doing in the bathtub when I’d hide for hours as a kid and race droplets with my fingers. And as I write this I realize, who leaves a child in the bathtub until someone finally knocks and the water is cold?

Now I allow myself to feel everything and I’m learning to allow myself to feel nothing, too.

Because I do, some days, feel nothing. Someone falls in front of me and I feel nothing.

A child cries and I feel nothing.

The only child who does, who keeps me from the nothing, is my own. And that’s enough for now.

I won’t sink her in my river of darkness when its tide wash ashore. I’m learning there can be happiness in nothing, too.

I’m not not happy. I’m just done pretending I have to pretend to be all the time.

That sounds healthy.

Maybe. Maybe I’m talking to myself. Writing on a black screen and hoping that someone writes back.

Maybe being allowed to feel things is a different kind of cage, one that I opened the doors to and stepped inside of.

Do you really think that?

I’m not sure what I believe about how I feel.

I am dumb, and ugly and meek. Duh.

Don’t forget boring.

Right, and I’m boring. I’m the boring one.

And selfish.

Yes.