Curried Curry Flavored Favor

I was sat there, on my phone’s default search engine looking for articles related to how to date an ugly person, and shuttered momentarily at the prospect of someone reading aloud my search history in front of a jury that would certainly decide if what I was looking for was pitifully disgusting enough to warrant shooting me in the face. These imagined capital punishing jurors shake their heads in dismay, turn their lips into over-sized elongated frowns and sigh loudly in my mind. I dare not scroll through the results. The fact that there actually were results was all the comfort I would afford myself at the time.
It had been a trying couple of weeks. A wound, I obviously hadn’t let me heal, scraped open to remind me I was still alive. I jumped at the chance to hold on to something I had jumped to let go a long time ago and fell and broke my heart, for the millionth time. I had been tending to the surface of the heartache- searching for work arounds, but neglected to admit why I was doing any of it. The scraping took me by surprise although it shouldn’t have, but it did, because I still hadn’t fully accepted my role in my own injury. Accepting it now even gives me pause. Silly me.
I was willing, again, to do something with someone, again that I was only marginally connected to or interested in, again. The same fucking person actually. And afterward, when I was remembering that I was sat there, looking for a way to convince myself to do something I didn’t want to do that it struck me I could no longer consider myself a full victim of the hurt as if it was all coming from the outside. It wasn’t. I didn’t have to engage. To be kind. To listen. To offer. I knew it was a trap I guess perhaps I was slightly hoping it would kill me in a romantic way, a poison at the end of the road, instead of self inflicted paper cut to the aorta.
I was, and have been avoiding being alone. Oh its fine as far as living arrangements go, and preferable when it comes to sleeping or driving but somewhere deep down, I hadn’t imagined a world where for real, for real, I was doing the ride by myself. Intellectually I understood that I always had been but I also understood that even from the start it was against my will. As any halfway intelligent child trying to survive would do I built it into armor- I can be alone you just watch me, with the caveat only known to myself, that one-day someone fabulous would come along to love me and by association everyone would see that I was amazing and should never have been abandoned in the first place because look, look at the person who chose, out of billions they could have selected from, me. There is no me, or wasn’t, without this imaginary savior of sorts who was just about to arrive, every moment of every day, under everything I did and said, for nearly 50 fucking years. He doesn’t exist and will not come. I cannot be saved from myself, after all.
I’m confident now that my most disgusting thoughts or even searches don’t even traverse perversion close enough for an arrest let alone, murder. I may be a filthy dramatic sex clown but I’m not evil. But I was willing to sacrifice the few moments I have left on this earth, arm in arm with someone I couldn’t bear to look at, just to avoid, hanging up Christmas Tree lights that only I would ever see. I don’t know which is sadder- the extent I was willing to go to avoid being alone, the armor I have used in front of everyone touting how self sufficiently single I was so incredibly grateful and proud to be, or the fear that I don’t genuinely deserve to be surrounded by love because I’m obviously deformed and maladjusted and not lovable, clearly. I’ve had a lot of years to think about this but instead I’ve chosen to get into debt, sleep with people I didn’t care about and most recently try to hypnotize myself to think someone who physically repulsed me, was better than just living with me. You will repeat the same lesson until you learn it.
No, I didn’t look at the search results, and I didn’t go out with Quasimodo, although he was sure he was a shoo-in like a fool. This morning I don’t think I so much hate thinking of myself alone as much as I hate wanting to do the work it would take to be in a relationship with another flawed human. Perhaps that’s the age talking. I do not hate going to bed at 9 PM in the nude by myself, spread eagle. Don’t hate not having to excuse myself if I pass gas in my car because hey that’s what air freshener and windows that roll down are for anyway. I don’t hate watching my favorite programs and falling asleep mid episode on the couch and restarting it when I feel like it. There are many luxuries to living alone. It genuinely is good enough, pretty good even, actually rather fabulous. And pulling up on 50 I can no longer blame parental relations, poor intimacy skills or a personality disorder diagnosis or anything else for only having a small group of humans I care about who have stuck by me through decades. I feel kinda lucky. I’m insane so therefore I know these people who have put up with me are true gems. Flawed too, and enough damage as well but they keep me in mind so I am real, after all. Things are just starting to seem smaller in importance since nothing we do is really forever and is insignificant to what I can learn and contribute while I keep waking. I do love myself and I wonder if before I die I will get to wake up one day and feel fully whole in that, truly and deeply, without backsliding, for an hour, or two. I laugh because I’m sure that will happen the two hours before I die which, still isn’t a bum deal. I don’t even think I have been faithful to any one person ever who wasn’t a figment of my imagination. But real roses, and popcorn, and sea breezes smell good in the actual world. To me anyway, also proof I am real. Perhaps I can envision a me that is simply okay with me. There are people who are happy and they aren’t entangled with anyone, at least that is what I’ve read on the internet. Perhaps I can envision a me that would get ignored by an imaginary pervert killing firing squad, because I’m not really so bad, on the whole. No one is coming to save me. The rest of this ride is up to me. I thought about the search results again and laughed which is why I sat back down to write a bit about it today, with it culminating in no real revelation. Hmm. Perhaps the ugly person that I need to learn to love is me. How many more hours will it take before I do so?