what we deserve and the true nature of love

Why do we seek out people who treat us like shit?

That is the question I’ve been wrestling with today. I have spent most of the day in my apartment, racking my brain, and stepping out only briefly to pick up some groceries. The streets were wet and it even smelled good - clean, like rain, like spring. But my head was not clean, my heart was not, and my hands have been downright dirty for a while.

I’m not sure what it is, this fucked up beast inside so many of us that makes us look for the people who don’t respect us the way we deserve to be, who don’t listen when we talk, who get up to smoke when we’re on stage, who will kiss us on the forehead on Monday and leave us spinning ourselves into butter by Friday, wondering what we’ve done wrong and why they won’t return an e-mail. Is it because we think we don’t deserve better? Is it some sort of twisted challenge factor, where we feel something has no worth unless we have to bust our asses for it? When do we learn that love is freely given and not won? We shouldn’t have to prove that we’re good enough for someone else’s love; the way love works is it is given even when we don’t necessarily deserve it. Having to fight for someone’s attention isn’t love. That’s our ego. That’s our own fucking pride, and we’re constantly fighting to keep it from splitting open like a wound.

Every now and then I meet a guy who gives me the time of day and then some. They scare the hell out of me. I’ll make excuses for not seeing these guys. He's too nice, I’ll say. And somehow that is supposed to cover a multitude of sins – mine, not his. Because nice doesn’t mean boring. Nice means I could probably get away with murder, even if I'm not predisposed to that kind of thing. Nice means he would forgive me for snoring and would call anyway. Nice means he would go to some godawful dayjob company party with me. And nice means I would lay myself open, I would show him my soft pink underbelly. I would trust him, I would love him, and one morning when everything was sunshine and roses, perhaps without his even meaning to, he could roll over, still asleep, completely unaware, and grab a fistful of my intestines and wrap them around my throat. And he was nice, I’d say. I never saw it coming. It doesn’t mean that it will happen; it’s just that it has.

It is amazing to me, really, how when we’ve been spoonfed shit for so long we convince ourselves, out of necessity and survival instinct, that it tastes like strawberries. Thank you, sir; may I have another? Maybe it's just that we like to see the spoon coming; at least we know what we’re dealing with and after a while we even get used to the texture. But it’s still shit any way you cut it. No matter what we tell ourselves it tastes like, it doesn’t mean we don’t deserve better, and it doesn’t make it right.