romanticize.

I hate that I need to romanticize my life to stay afloat.

The way everything falls back on me. How I am my own prince in shining armor. That I have to be whatever, or whomever I need.

I hate that I am never anyone’s first choice – not even second best. I’m somewhere down the line, easy to forget.

No one is holding my hand when it gets tough. No one is there when everything gets too overwhelming, and I need someone to tell me it’s going to be okay. No one holds my broken pieces together, like I always did for everyone else.

No matter how many times I rehash this in therapy, it is never enough. It doesn’t fill the hole inside me, it just reminds me again and again: how easy it is to let me go, how easy it seems to leave me.

I hate that I have to romanticize my life in so many different ways.

Everything I want to do, I do alone. Go to concerts, visit cities, find a table for one at a restaurant. Always needing to be in my own good company. I try not to think about these things too much, to not let it sink in, how awkward it sometimes feels.

I hate that others romanticize my life: my flat, my job, my two cats. That I am so independent, they wish they were like me. And sometimes I feel flattered – but most times, I want to scream. I want them to see that it’s not what it seems.

I hate that I have to romanticize my life to stay afloat.

But there are moments when I don’t. Where I cry in the shower, lie awake in my bed at night, where I feel like my ribs are caving in from all the pressure. The pressure to show up for myself, to function, because no one else lends a helping hand.

I have so many questions for all the people who have left, but I’ll never get the answers I seek.

So I repeat the process of fixing myself up; preparing myself to become vulnerable to someone new. To let them in, wishing for them to stay, because hope left me a long time ago anyway.

Until then, I will keep romanticizing my life one day at a time.

To stay afloat.

To stay alive.