Considering cutting everyone off and focusing entirely on my personal financial success. (Patreon)

Watching someone steadily approach me, getting closer to all of my most unremarkable traits, the proximity activating defence mechanisms like I’m a high security government research bunker protecting state secrets.

The problem is very simple, I realized in my adolescence we treat the people we know best worse than we treat acquaintances. We reward those who painstakingly peel back the layers of our selves and accept our grimy boring imperfect details with our worst moments, while putting on our mask of charisma and understanding for those at arms length.

I mean cosmic arms length, not literal arms length. Actual arms length is extremely close and intimate, the symbolic interpersonal version involves weeks of not speaking.

To have someone care enough about you to share their convictions with you honestly risks their convictions conflicting with your identity. Your love comes in a capsule marked Honesty but it’s telling me that part of me shouldn’t exist.

I spend about 50% of my day building infrastructure around my anxiety and anger and dissatisfaction to transform energy from a negative core into a positive output as a service to those around me, what did you think would happen if you got closer towards the core? You’re inadvertently being targeted by my high security government research bunker, which normally only fires on itself.

I never feel more guilt than when I’m in a relationship. I watch the meanest and most selfish parts of me unleash themselves on the kindest person in my vicinity. Not unleashed, it’s just the leash normally keeps it’s firing range in a tight circumference and I’ve invited someone into the splash zone. So the meanest most selfish parts of me are extremely leashed but they’ve been writhing in there for so long unnoticed, I’m revolted when the least deserving person who has devoted themselves to the glorious me the most is now sat in a cage with an abusive dog. Here’s your payment for being my favourite person in the world. Everyone else gets me on stage, performing for the back row with impeccable passion, and you get me wondering if I should even love you. Thank you for your service sweetheart.

You probably shouldn’t date if you’re doubtful of your capacity for sincere love. I’m capable for moments, anyone can find themselves caught up in the vicissitudes of biological bliss. But the moment it feels tiresome, I’m tossed back into the waves of my own ineptitude. Why embark upon such a case study of my lowest points? Why, when alternatively I can provide a nicely packaged sack of no promises with lots of favours.

I can be eloquent about it but the truth is I’m just embarrassed. My apartment looks really gorgeous because I love the relief and excitement on the face of those entering as a result of the gorgeousness. That’s really important to me. Giving people the best of me means a lot to me. I hate myself and I love other people. Why the fuck you entering my orbital center???!

So this is a long way to say I don’t love you. I don’t inherently love, in a passionate and unabashed sense. Instead I choose to love. I perform the act of loving. It’s a lot more complicated, and yet maybe I have a mental illness that brands my emotions extreme and unreliable, but you know what maybe in the cosmic sense holding someone close instead of holding them at arms length looks a lot more like decisions than feelings. And maybe I choose to love instead of feel love, which is a fleeting fucking immature resource that lands me in a pit of indulgence and hurting people’s feelings, maybe I love you because I love you like I fuck you like I listen to you like I think about you maybe I love you like one of the many things I do and I’m sorry you get the worst of me but also you’re welcome for the most boring piece of me I don’t show anyone else.

The cowardly thing to do would be to show no one the very unremarkable truth. The courageous thing to do would be actually tell the high security government research facility to maybe stop shooting itself? Stop shooting anything? Maybe shoot only dangerous things. Hard to conceive of after a lifetime of anti-everything-including-itself programming but are we adults or are we pessimistic little bitches?

What would financial success allow me? More capability in taking care of the people I truly care about? Would be a shame if I gained in my career without being able to spoil anyone I love with my spoils. I find passion in giving the best of me. Disgust in giving the worst. I feel like I give the far away people the best and the close people the worst. I need to give the far away people the best so I can make money to give to the closest people. I say I’m giving my worst while my loved ones say “This is the best no one sees.”

I’m considering cutting everyone off and focusing entirely on my personal financial success. I decide once again no, despite everything I think and feel I’m fully confidently sure I’m wrong, and my fear of God is not more powerful than God, so if I accept I am not God and submit myself to humility yet again, the love I have to offer is so valuable it would be cruel of me to withhold it just because I’m too scared to be flawed.

I’m flawed for you baby. I’m the worst of myself, just for you. I’m hurting myself less because you don’t deserve to be hurt, and you want to be inside of my maelstrom.

Thanks for loving me, I don’t deserve it, and I’m working on not believing that I don’t deserve it.