New Month's Resolution

I am terrible at resolutions. But I decided a month's resolution is easier to keep than a year's resolution. And since I hate failing, I know that I can rest assured on this one.

My grandfather died today. I don't know him that well because his choices pushed my father away. They caused family to resent him. So I never got to know him, or know about his life. And I regret never making the effort to push that aside and form a relationship anyway. But I think this is what leaves me with the most regret: Because in myself, I see that I push people away. But I don't want to die without anybody knowing me. So, at the expense of my pride, I am going to open up this month.

That being the case, I'll reveal a secret that starts off with the fact that Michelle called me tonight. She said so many wonderful things that I almost wish I had sat with pen in hand to write them all down. But perhaps it isn't so much what she said, but what I was thinking while she imparted her vast wisdom. As she pointed out my inability to see how much God truly loves me, I truly recognized something that I had noticed before but never internalized until now.

Throughout my entire life, love for me has existed with conditions. I felt pressure as a young child to be perfect in every way possible so that my parents would love me. I felt, even as a kindergartner, that if I messed up even the slightest, they wouldn't love me anymore. I remember vividly one day in class I got a question on a test wrong: I circled the doghouse in red instead of blue. I absolutely lost it and could not stop crying because I recognized my imperfection in that moment. My sister had to be called down from her classroom to console me. Writing this I realize how fearful I was of failure...fearful that my parents would stop loving me if I made a mistake.

My first relationships were all conditional. I thought that if I just gave more and more in compromise of myself, that I would be loved. Really, that was pretty destructive. Self-destructive. Because all I wanted was love. And I thought it required me to do something in order to get it.

I am pretty sure the beginning of Mark and I's relationship wasn't that way. I am pretty sure that's why he was my first true love. Granted, he never knew everything about me, my past, my family: but he knew my present and we really did love each other in that present. In college though, I felt like it became conditional in order to have a future. The ironic thing is that I am pretty sure I placed the conditional there, because I thought it was supposed to be there. I regret that a bit. But I can't take it back. I can hope to learn from recognizing that, though.

What I do recognize is that most of the way I feel about love stems from my relationship with my father. I never felt like I was good enough for him. And I thought that was normal until I saw the way my best friend and her dad interacted and realized that some dads do love unconditionally. I always felt too fat. Or too stupid. Or not interesting enough. So I dieted to the detriment of my health. And entered honors programs, humanities, and AP courses. And took up the guitar and threw myself head-first into music so that we'd have something to talk about. Surprisingly, I still didn't ever feel good enough. Each Christmas and birthday I would shop for weeks in advance to find him the perfect gift. And each Christmas and birthday I would find it tossed aside in some chair to be returned the next day. His love was conditional. And I never seemed to make the grade.

So it is hard for me to let people in... To even have the desire to get to know somebody else who will place conditions on our relationship. Because no matter what - no matter how hard I try or how many conditions I do end up meeting, I feel like more conditions exist and the love I crave never will. And so it is terribly ironic to me that when unconditional love does surface, I question it and push it away because I think I don't deserve it. Which leaves me to seek conditional love and involuntarily attach myself to the people I know will push me away. I think mostly because I need to prove that I am good enough for somebody to love. And each time I am disappointed by that, I have a greater desire to more fully prove it.

The reason I fell in love with Preston in the first place is because he put no conditions on the relationship. Every doubt I had he blew out of the water. So I opened up to him more than I have ever opened up to any other person. And most likely to my own detriment, I grew a love for him that was beyond any condition that I could have possibly placed on the relationship. Because I was so honest and he allowed me to be... and still said I love you despite everything he learned about me, good and bad. The great thing about him being on a mission was that no conditions could really exist, which created an atmosphere for my love to grow even more. Because I thought it was unconditional love. I thought I had found what I had been wanting all along. And looking back now, I needed that more than anything to get through this past year. Because all the problems that I had repressed for my entire life had surfaced within 6 months of each other. And had Preston not been there for me through it, I probably would have given up. So I am grateful to God for knowing that in that moment I needed it - even if what I perceived it to be wasn't truly unconditional love.

My biggest disappointment this year has come from the fact that I allowed myself to trust in that. When he placed conditions, when he said he couldn't feel that way about me because of this and that and the other, I am pretty sure my world stopped. And the thing I couldn't convey was that my disappointment did not come from the unfulfilled promises...or rather the inability to fulfill any promise made to me over the past few years. Unfulfilled promises I am used to. Believe me. I wasn't counting on the future - I could barely count on the present. But when he came home, I was counting on love.

Yes, my biggest disappointment came from the conditions he put on his love. The conditions he thinks have to be there in order to love realistically. The conditions that now exist that have pushed me away. Conditions I cannot change. And conditions that have nothing to do with me, whatsoever, except they have everything to do with me in every way. The mere fact that those conditions exist now, and never did before, because said "reality" has set in, are what have made the past month a living hell for me. Why? Because I let him in. I let him in and let him see me - everything about me. And he said it didn't matter - the good, the bad - because he loved me. And having that love questioned caused me to question myself: absolutely everything about myself. And whether it is true or not, it made me feel not good enough, again. But even worse. Because I had rejection come after he saw me for absolutely everything I am. And the thing is that I had revealed my heart, my soul, my life to him only because I thought it was unconditional.

Ironically, when I recognized the love Preston said he had for me, I didn't feel worthy of it, and gave multiple opportunities to end it. To me, those were reality checks. To me, those times when I said "walk away" and he did not were proof enough that it truly was unconditional. And now, when I need that love the most: when I need every condition to be put aside and when I need to feel like I am good enough and that I can do this - he opts out. I shouldn't have been surprised, but I was.

The only evidence I have of unconditional love in my life is the love I am able to feel for others. I know God has the capacity to love that much because I feel that love for others deep within my heart - despite what is done to me by that person. I think that is what frustrates me so much. Because it is the only thing I have ever asked from anybody. And it is the one thing nobody has ever been able to give me, family or otherwise. And every time there is a glimmer of hope that love of that magnitude can exist for me, I find myself horribly deceived.

So I sit here and understand more fully why I am incapable of feeling the capacity of God's love for me. Maybe it's because I don't feel good enough. Or maybe because I don't know how to let Him in. Or because I question it. Because I don't fully believe it. Because I have yet to find somebody who has ever given me reason to.

And what hurts the most is when I look around me and see this unconditional love happening for everybody else, it makes me realize that unconditional love just cannot exist for me.

You question why I am so hard to get to know. And why I push so many people away. And deflect my true feelings into humor and sarcasm. And why I am unable to get close to anyone...and my answer to you is always because I don't want to...because I don't need anybody but myself. But now you know that it is a lie. Because truly, more than anything else in the entire world, I desire this: to be loved in return.