Adequate

 Kids, today's word is Adequate.

Not capable, not loved, not included.

ADEQUATE

This is how I feel when I push myself to the breaking point.

And I do, every time.

I do it at work, in the kitchen creating food for other people, at other people's houses, at events.

I don't get invited to anything that I see people that I'm friends on Facebook doing.  I've never been the one who has been included, ever.  I cannot explain with words how it feels to be this isolated, so I'll give you some examples.

I was always adequate enough to talk to people in school, but I was never invited to hang out afterwards.  I was never invited to a single birthday party or party, at all.  I was adequate enough to graduate with a C+ average.

I have always been adequate enough to sleep with, but never enough to stick around for.

I have always been adequate enough to be friends with when there's something I can do to benefit you, like taking care of you when you are sick, but never enough to take care of when I am.

Fast forward through the crap that was the first 33 years of my life....

The year was 2016.

In January, I had been dating someone new.  Mr. Seven Year Itch was making my life a living hell in every way that he could; catfishing me, stalking me, pretending to be my friend.  Drugged and raped me with my children in the other room.  Bring on the protection order and court hearing.  The anxiety disorder and constant panic attacks.  The inability to shower if I was home alone.  The inability to be alone, at all.  The binge drinking, the sex, the serial dating.  The changing of my hair and dying it after the two year journey I had been on to heal that part of myself and the subsequent blow to my psyche that I wasn't strong enough to handle it. The stuffing it down because I couldn't live if I didn't. Adequate.

In November, a complete breakdown and I couldn't hang.  Took almost the entire month off. Started to heal, started new medication, started therapy.  Wrote a lot to get it out, but not all of it.  Just enough.  Adequate.

New Year's Eve, my aunt eloped in her living room after telling everyone they were just coming over for a house warming party. I made cupcakes and a wedding cake that looked like it could be a house warming cake, complete with a tree made from tootsie rolls and spearmint leaves.  It took me hours. I felt adequate. 

By March 2017 I was pretending I wasn't a complete mess.  I was working full time at my job at the switchboard, and had just signed up to go full time with Oncology so I was working two jobs, raising two teenagers alone, juggling dating 2 men at once and neither that amounted to anything, and barely living.  Adequate.

April Fool's Day, my other aunt got married.  She eloped and gave me 24 hours notice about it.  I could have just let her do it alone, but I had to be there.  I had to make the cake and take the pictures.  I needed to be there for her.  I needed to feel needed, and, adequate.

She harassed me nonstop for the pictures for days after when I was so burnt out that I was barely alive. "Yes, let me drop everything for this thing that I'm doing for you, for free!!"  I'll just be dying over here in the corner.  

She didn't talk to me for months, and I was left to deal with everything I was going through alone. Not adequate enough to be heard, just adequate enough to be expected of.

Every family event, busting my butt to be perfect.  Baking and cooking and helping out until my body collapsed because I am convinced I won't be included if I didn't make multiple things for everyone to enjoy. Surprise! I'm still not included.  Still not adequate enough.

I don't get close to people so I don't feel the sting.  See, I lied there.  I always feel the sting.  As said in a different post, even when I say that I give zero fucks, there's still 30% still hanging on for dear life.  I'm always that single girl, the one without a partner who doesn't get invited to the card games, to camp to hang out and laugh with.  A person who is worth getting to know, at all.

The one time that I was actually happy in a relationship, and thought it was real, that I might have actually found what everyone else in my life has.  Found out he was sex offender a month prior to the end of the relationship (10 months in).  My entire family loved him.  I was adequate enough to be included for the first time ever.

When it ended and I told my (now former) best friend (the one I had since I was 6), she was at the beginning of her mental health downward spiral that she is very much still riding (I will get to that in a different post), she blew the entire situation out of proportion, and messaged every single one of my family members that she knew, and told them about what I had found out.  She also told them that I had dated three other sex offenders in the past, still have no idea where that came from (not true)...I needed to be saved....on and on.  I was cut off from my entire family.  They didn't unfriend me on social media, of course.  I was just a kid spanked and sitting in time out in a dark corner for writing on the wall with permanent marker, even though it said "I love you mommy".  Did any of them actually talk to me about it?  Did any of them care that I had no idea what life I had been living for almost an entire year and my heart was destroyed and my life was turned completely upside down in the blink of an eye?  Do they care that I have completely given up on dating and that I now will never get to know what it's like to have what they have? You know the answer already. She and I didn't talk for almost a year after that, by the way.

They did however, follow me like I was some murderer trying to kidnap their children when we all went to the Lumberjack show when my sister was up last July.  The kids all wanted a rock from the big chest they were selling and in my effort to be an aunt that I always wanted the privilege to be, I had them all come with me because I wanted to do something special.  Growing up, whenever I went somewhere with dad I always got rocks.  It was important to me that I carry on that tradition.  The looks on their faces when they learned they didn't have to pick just one stone, but got to pick out a whole bags worth, meant everything to me. 

Trying to give my niece a treat when I had gone out of my way to make stuff that was allergen free so she could get to enjoy something, my sister in law barked at me to ask her mother if it was okay, as if I had no idea how to take care of a child.  The same sister in law who, who when I was excited and sharing with my family about the new promotion that I had coming at work (in an effort seem adequate enough to be liked) smugly replied "Everyone is so short staffed they're letting anyone cover now." For the first time in my life, I have a career in which I feel like this is what I should be doing.  Like I have finally found that thing that I was made to do.  I have my own office and the entirety of my job is to be happy for complete strangers all day long.  It basically threw boiling acid on my joy.  I bought pizza for lunch for everyone that day despite the fact that it almost broke my budget.  To be adequate.

I can live without feeling everything that I was made to feel that entire week, ever again.  Who am I kidding?  I feel that way every time I remember. 

I cannot, however, stop feeling the sting knowing that I am never going to be adequate enough to have the privilege of sleepovers, dance parties, tea parties, being needed for babysitting, teaching them all the cool stuff I know in the kitchen and about science.  I'm just the sister who's different, who's always the odd one out, who isn't supposed to be allowed to have feelings - I am the dramatic one, afterall.

They can say all they want about how dramatic and over the top that I am, how much of a liar I am.  They aren't here helping me in any capacity that adds value to my life.  They can judge me all they want about how I've raised my kids, by myself, without their involvement.  They can hate me all they want for saying anything about this, but if they took a second to realize, it took me an entire year of feeling this way before I said anything at all.

My sister will be home again in two weeks and I was so excited about it, that I had also gotten the week off so that I could enjoy it.  It also falls on finals week.  My daughter is coming home for a couple of days so that she can see everyone.  I may cancel my vacation time and work.  Every fiber of my being already feels like the Cowardly Lion right before he jumps through the window of the Wizard's castle.  

Or I may keep my vacation and spend it doing anything else than be treated like an outsider in my own family.  I suppose time will tell.