I'll Move Out of the Way for You

Okay, so here's the deal: I don't like to be tossed about.

And, yet, it happens at least once a week, if not much more often.

I don't like to be led on, I don't like to be lied to, and I don't like to be treated like a second rate individual when I am the one pulling your ass out of every bad situation you get yourself into.  I don't like to be toyed with, but I find I am everyone's favorite play-thing.

I am always there when people need me, and when they don't, I get left behind.

I have done my fair share of bitching about this in the past, people using and abusing me, and I continue to stay on stand-by, I continue to listen, to offer a shoulder, to help out in every way I can.  And I continue to get dumped on.

The problem is, I don't want to be unreliable, or labeled as such.  I don't want to be seen as a cold-hearted bitch or uncaring or unkind.  I want people to rely on me, but I often find people I cannot rely on.

Take my best friends in high school, one of which would go on to abandon me for my brother.  I was always there to soothe the ache for them, but when I needed someone, or when I planned something to make them better, they left me hanging.  One great example is my stupid-ass ex-friend Michelle, the one who thought she was going to marry my brother.  They broke-up one weekend--for the hundredth time, I'm sure--and I, still under her manipulation and thinking my brother was an ass, offered to drive to her city ninety miles away to spend the night and make it better if just for a few days.  Already on my way, I gave her a call to see how she was, and she cancelled.  I sat on the side of the road, trying to talk her out of cancelling, out of staying home alone, but she was already convinced I didn't need to come.  And there I was, prepared to drive an hour and looking forward to seeing someone I hadn't in a while, on the side of the road being told to turn around.  I was furious, but more than that, I was disappointed in myself for believing it was actually going to happen.  That I was actually going to drive the hour, meet her for dinner, hang out bad-mouthing boys, and spend the night on her spare bed.  I thought my problem was that I was an idiot; I am starting to think I am too desperate for something I can't quite put my finger on.

When I had a tarot card reading, one of the cards was to tell me how people saw me.  It said they saw me as unreliable; if I were to make travel plans with them, they would cancel.  I have to agree; but, I have to question as well, because it seems inconsistent.  I have spent the better part of the past few years trying to be anything but unreliable.  I have tried to be there for every bad thing, and have been scolded by it.  And I continue to be there, to go out of my way, even when I know I will eventually be overlooked, because I don't want to seem that way: unreliable.  Maybe my sister or my father put it in my head that I was, or maybe I have just always thought it myself, but it is the last thing I have ever wanted to be.  I don't want to be stupid, I don't want to be cruel, I don't want to be ugly, and I want to be reliable.  I want to be the person you can count on.  I want someone to count on me.

So I push hard to maintain that title, and usually what comes of it is this: your boyfriend becomes more important than me.  He does something truly shitty, and I come around to help out, and once he's back, even without offering apology or sincere regret, you run back to him and continue with your little charade that he loves you and everything will be alright.  I think if I honestly thought the boyfriends they run back to did love them, I wouldn't mind, but usually I am clever enough to realize they don't.  Ironically, of course, you will break up with him, and who will be there to hold you when you cry?  Me.  Because I am a sucker for the needy, and really all I need is to be needed.

And then, when we make plans, when we decide to travel and to road-trip and to do things that people our age are supposed to do, my friends cop-out at the last minute, and leave me hanging high and dry.  I wonder why I haven't ever done anything, it's because everyone bails on me, and I can't foot the bill myself.  And I am afraid to go by myself, but maybe I shouldn't be...maybe I should just keep on going.  Get in the car and drive wherever we were going myself, and then maybe I won't be unreliable.

I don't really know what the problem is.  I think it is that I am a pushover and allow myself to be walked on because I have severe abandonment issues.  I need to learn how to say no, and I need to learn how to not care if I have to.

I don't think I should stop being there for people.  I don't think I should just go away and not help when I am needed.  But, I am dead-tired of being walked on.  Of having plans changed because you let yourself sleep-on it and be swayed.  Some jack-ass treats you like shit, and I allow you to turn around and treat me that way, because you love him, even though he won't ever love you.  I will love you, and you won't ever love me. Not the way I need it.

My mother says I have to draw they right people to me.  I have to be the person I want to get to know, and I have to draw that time of person to me.  I have to learn to weed out the bad, to see them for what they are.  The problem is, that I fall in love too easily, and they aren't necessarily bad friends...when they want to be.

Whatever happened to chicks before dicks?

Whatever happened to loyalty?

Whatever happened to keeping plans with friends, because friends are the families we pick, not the one's we've been stuck with?

Whatever happened to being decent people?

I guess I don't have room to talk.  I guess I can't really be considered a "decent" person.  I guess that is my ultimate downfall.

You draw to you what you project.  I am needy and self-loathing.  Just look at my friends.

I'll Move Out of the Way for Her, Too