All The While My Feet Bleed.
I've spent my whole life performing to be loved.
“You’re easy to love” just doesn’t taste quite right. A phrase so rarely received from anyone but my mother; however, the few times I have, it’s certainly been hard to stomach. Making myself loveable has taken years of rehearsal, so thank you, that’s sweet, but it’s almost insulting for you to assume that there has been anything easy about the making of this.
I was put in ballet at 3-years-old. I was a natural mover, as evidenced by my dancing to “When the Pimp’s in the crib ma Drop it Like it’s Hot” by Snoop Dogg while still in my diapers. I was always happy wearing pink, and so pink tutus and pink barrettes and pink leotards I wore sashaying across linoleum floors.
You come to learn as you grow that one of the fundamentals of ballet is the illusion of ease.
A ballerina’s arms move from first to fifth to fourth position with all softness and grace and elegance, her neck elongated, smile cemented, but all the while her feet bleed out under the satin. It’s not your job to notice. The best sound to hear when you drop from heights once unknown is a sweet deafening silence. Followed by the praise your teacher gives out, but out only deservingly. Ballerinas only bleed out with curtains drawn.
And I love smiling, all the while my feet bleed. It tastes just good enough. I’m not a ballerina.
I had just popped my psychosis cherry. After many hours, when they finally delivered me to floor 2, room 22, bed 2, adorned with my number 2 tattoo— I had started to accept defeat. But despite grippy socks, despite diagnosis, despite despite despite after conversing and witnessing and becoming all the more conscious, I could only conclude:
I’m not fucking crazy. Y’all are fucking crazy.
I’m not like the rest of you. And I can prove it.
I felt some relief in the psych ward when I started drawing portraits with my oil pastels on paper lunch trays. And I did some for the nurses deserving. One nurse smiled so big when he received his portrait, and he told me he was going to hang it up when he got home. I believed him. For in these moments I wasn’t just a regular crazy bitch, I was the most excellent crazy bitch. The gifted and talented crazy bitch. A patient with potential. One not doomed to be a repeat visitor; she’ll make it out the ward for real. The one that makes their job just a bit easier. The one that they could go home to their family and because I behaved and I gave a gift and I listened and I played by the rules and I didn’t show them my crazy of course they would like me. They had no other option. I could only hope I was their favorite.
My therapist is perfect. My friend said she looks like a brown Madison Beer. Face card-lethal. As her voice echoes out of my laptop for the past two years, she sounds almost like Scarlett Johansson performing as the AI Samantha in Her. She’s young enough to get my internet references and make her own, she laughs with me as I hit my clear or mint-flavored vape, she knows a lot about Drag Race and makes me quote Rupaul she begins… “If you don't love yourself, how in the hell you gonna love somebody else? Can I get an amen?!”, we have the same breed of dog, we both have therapist mothers, she is Canadian but she’s not white and I never found an appropriate time to ask her what kind of brown she is, just like she never tells me what “holiday” she is celebrating with her family. I once said to her “your hair looks so good!” and she said “oh it just dried like this I just came in from the rain” - that kind of girl.
I’ve convinced myself that if I met her in the girls bathroom I’d compliment her lip combo and we’d laugh and become friends, friends at least for that night and that would be enough and of course she’s perfect because I know so very little about her.
The night before therapy, I posted something on my close friends story about how I act in therapy. How I proclaim that nigga that bitch and use slurs and vape and make her laugh and am always trying my best and I’m self-aware to a fault and I ended upon, “I wonder if I’m her favorite client.” A question I ask myself quite often. This week in therapy, she decided to let me know that my whole life has been a performance. Great. A chill Thursday for me. Performance wasn’t in vain; it was for self-protection and control, two of my most favorite things to cling to.
I’ve worked hard to be loved. Trying to tombé pas de bourrée glissade grand jeté while the feet bleed and the sweat pours just trying to will them into loving me and so I said to her “So what do you mean… 1+1 doesn’t equal 2?” And apparently not, apparently not when it comes to matters of love. Fuck.
We had just had such a lovely night together, me and him. Everything about our evening was sweet. Then I woke up with no alarm, and it was still dark, so I went to check the time on his phone. It was 6am and there was a tinder notification. I debated leaving. But instead chose to try to go back to sleep. Maybe we could talk it out again? Maybe it would be different. I had in and out nightmare dreams on repeat of how the confrontation would go and eventually I woke up out my sleep again with this shout. This woke him, and we had that conversation.
I said I was going to leave when I saw it. He said, “No, you weren’t.”
And I hated how distinctly right he was about me in that moment.
And I hated how instead of leaving I was there asking why am I not good enough for you, and what do you even want from me, what are you seeking? And I hate how he just didn’t know. I earnestly was trying so, so, hard to be good enough to be this someone’s everything despite him making it clear I wouldn’t get what I wanted and all I wanted was to be his. And I hate how he answered with just telling me to come here and held me and I hate that then we fucked. And I hate that I told him to call me “good girl” while we did just to hear what that would sound like. And I hate how that was enough to make me believe I was good; until it didn’t.
And I loved that he made me this breakfast after and that we ate it in the sun, and I love this cute matchbox he gave me after. And I hate that all this time later the matchbox is taped on my wall like a best effort award to remember him by. And I hate that I don’t know if I will ever get rid of it. Like the note I’ve saved in my wallet. And later that day, I spent over an hour shoe shopping for him and sending him suggestions and links because that’s something I’m good at. And I love being helpful and I love being good. And surely, the hourly wage of that labor could equate to love returned. Even if the 40-some options were good but you know, just not quite what he was looking for, just like me when it comes to people, I’ve tried to make 1+1 equal two with. I was not going to leave when I saw it.
And everything given to me wasn’t just supposed to be good enough; it was supposed to be the best. For someone who is starving, crumbs tend to make you feel full; and how dare they not? I’ll happily be down here on my knees if it means you can see me better with my mouth full.
I’ll wash my mouth out again if it’ll make you taste me better. I’ll stretch and start the routine over the next morning whether or not they said please but God Forbid I didn’t say thank you. Yes because you said so. I couldn’t fathom the thought of losing, despite the prize being fool's gold, even when they told me so from the starting line. I didn’t care. If I could feel like what it would be like to be enough, even just for a while.
I was an impressive child. And that always worked.
If I could be the best maybe they’d see me. Best class project, best poem, best performance. The best anything to show when I saw my dad once and a while, why bother show him anything if it wasn’t of worth? I can tell he’s tired. I’ll give him something to remember me by while he disappeared to do whatever he did at this place called “work”. I had to be impressive in high school with all with a smile amongst the sea of blondes with longchamp bags touting 4 APs, 3 varsity sports, several clubs, honor societies, and 100 hours of community service and playing instruments and and and and and. If not what was I other than a nigga out of place?
Nowadays I answer the chronically New York question, “What do you do?” and I’m graced with eyebrow raises and smiles and follow-up questions that make people think I must be somebody. I’m showered with the accusations of “successful” and “inspiring” and it makes me clench my teeth with an armored smile. Likes, reposts, applause, hugs, adoration, flattery, even weirdo behavior. Flattering but how dare you. Do you not see the potential? I’m not even close to checking all the boxes that would equate “success.” Are you so easily turned on? I’ll get there, and you’ll see, and then maybe I can digest your praise.
My therapist said to me this week, “You are not your excellence.” I am not my excellence? Like you must be fucking joking. I’m not my excellence? It’s all that I am. Excellent because I run business, excellence that inspires others, excellent because that event I produced was excellent, and my art is excellent, and my writing is excellent, loved me because I made his coffee excellent, I smiled excellent, I had this excellent kind of energy about me, I fucked excellent, I looked excellent with his hand wrapped around me, excellent because I graduated on time despite despite despite, and excellent because all the while no one knew how hard it was, excellent gift giver, excellent smile, excellent friend who listens and excellent friend who apologizes if she doesn’t, excellent because, excellent because, excellent because and that’s why you care. That’s why you’re reading this in the first place, that’s why I’m here, because somebody somewhere said I was excellent.
But there’s no love there. Love is love regardless of. I just haven’t been granted the pleasure.
I used to do this thing where I’d point out some kind of oddity on my body to whoever I just had sex with. Retrospectively, I think I wanted to see they even noticed this weirdness or noticed that. Would they kiss it or berate me? Would they leave or would they stay? And I, no matter the reaction, was never satisfied; yet always had the impulse to point out an imperfection.
One day, I imagine I wake up next to someone somewhere who loves me by hairs protruding from my chin and they’d notice them without me showing them and so maybe I’d pluck them less. Someone would love me by the sink full of yesterday’s dishes and a month’s worth of laundry, and I won’t be embarrassed because that’s actually exactly who I am. And even if I turned on count 7 instead of 8, even if I said the wrong thing, even if I was too much or too loud they wouldn’t care because at least they got the pleasure to witness me. And I wouldn’t feel the need to apologize for not bending the right way, and they wouldn’t tell me which way to bend either.
I do have this of course. With my bestest friends. My bestest and only sister and my bestest and only father. My mother who claims I’m easy to love. Unconditional. I just trend towards unsatisfied until-
I can’t perform for my therapist; that would defeat the very purpose. She knows my most secret secrets. My mistakes repeated and repeated. My filth. My lack of faith. My gross wormy brain and anxieties. My wounds. My damage. She knows me undone. I chose her, so contractually, she had to choose me too, but with her, I know what it could feel like to be chosen regardless. I once had a therapist drop me after only a few sessions because she couldn’t “handle” my issues or my “schedule”; she just didn’t want to try with me. I felt I wasn’t worth the effort.
My therapist now tries with me. And I didn’t even try to make her like me.
I haven’t told her of all the times I’ve remarked upon how funny she is or how often I find myself regurgitating information she's graciously spat at me through the screen to my peers. How much I accredit the appeasement of my suffering to her. I never lie to her. So the least I could do is be her favorite client. I want to be her favorite girl. But with my her, I’ll never get the satisfaction of knowing.
I’ve been seeing my therapist for two years; she is perfect, I hope I am her favorite client, and although it’s contractual, regardless, I’m hers. For what is a love language if the language is pleading.
