…until the person I am pushing finally walks away then I cry and hate myself for a good long while. Then I get up and redo this cycle over and over again. I have been doing it for about half my life now.

I do not know exactly why I do it. I just so. I try not to but I can’t help myself. I have gone to therapy and all they say is stop doing it. We haven’t ever figured out why I do it… and how exactly can I stop.

This is coming from a latest round of heated discussions with a friend of mine, who in my opinion has been closing himself off more and more recently and I frakking hate that. Part of it is my fault for pushing too hard – pushing for him to go away and pushing to hard to keep him near.

I have this problem – I am not an independent woman who can make myself happy. My happiness goes hand in hand with my relationships with other people. In truth, this is one of the reasons why I cut myself off from people. I am fine on my own without  a lot of people in my life but bring someone in that I can care about it and I will smother not just them but myself in the process of trying to change who I am to please them. I will freely admit, I am not good for the people I am close to. I can be clingy and desperate for the approval from people I care about. To the point that I will do anything to please them… this has been a curse my entire life. I do not know why but it has caused me a huge amount of pain since I was a child.

And it has caused me pain in relationships. I will freely admit that the failure of a majority of my relationships was my fault. Stemming mainly from my desire to not have people angry or upset with me and my desire to make them happy and in the process making myself unhappy because I would smother my own personality to try to keep someone happy. This is because I understand that I have a very large personality – a bit overwhelming at times. Too overwhelming and it is hard to keep people around when you do because well, people don’t like it.

This has just been my experience. If I am myself – weird, crazy, insane, loud, obnoxious with over the top “let me be wacko’ personality that can be (when I allow it) an extremely extraverted person… guys don’t want to date you, girls for the most part hate you. See, I learned early on that if you want a person to date you – you have to be docile and not independent and definatly not over the top.

Why do I think this? Well up to the age of 17, I was fine at being myself. Loud and crazy and just wacko… but I got tired of not being able to get dates. See guys didn’t want to date me – there were a few here and there but they weren’t around for a long time. Generally, once they got to know me a bit better they would disappear. Even the good ones. It didn’t help that my best friend for most of this time was the perfect girl that all the guys wanted to date – especially the guys I liked. Which sucked big time. I also had a hard time making friends… according to the rumors at school I was the class slut, even though I didn’t have sex with anyone. This was a rumor started by another “good friend” and unfortunately, no one took the time to get to know me and based their knowledge of me on this rumor. I am sure some of them believe it was truth still to this day… sad I know.

So, I became what people thought I was… because no one gave a shit otherwise… I hated myself for this. I still do. I used to be a strong woman but over the years, the fear of being alone have made me weaker and weaker. I want people to get close but to get them to be close I weaken myself… and then hate both of us for me doing it.

This is not saying I am not a strong woman… I am, I mean hell I have been to hell in back several times over in my life time and lived to tell the tale. But when it comes to relationships, I am so damned desperate for approval I weaken myself and then hate myself for it. I will do anything and everything for someone I care about just to make sure that I do not disappoint them. And in the end disappoint myself because I am not being me in many cases.

I do not know exactly who I am or who I will be one day but I do know I am damned tired of not being myself just to make other people want to be around me. I want to get back to the person I was before… and I will.

So, why do I push – because its a security mechanism. I push people out of my life who have the potential to hurt me. Like putting your hand into the fire… you take it back out because its harmful. I see my relationships with some people as such: I put my hand into the fire then realize that wasn’t a smart thing to do. I am not saying these people are harming me for real… sometimes a walk through fire can be cleansing… symbolically. But I fear the pain that being close to someone can bring me so I push them away and hurt anyways. Stupid? Yep… I hurt myself no matter what but its a hurt I can control. I can be the one to cause the pain, I can control it instead of not controlling the pain that I know someone else will cause. Because in my mind they will cause me pain.

Everything I do, I do it to myself… and I hate myself for it afterwards. I have a lot of self-loathing because I feel like I am going about life all wrong. And not just one or two things wrong but everything. Relationships, working, school, life in general.

Society seems to paint us this picture as how life is suppose to be if you are to successful and happy and like everything else – I do not fit that mold. Life is not a romance novel, people do not fall in love in a few days, weeks or months. Sometimes yes – but not everyone. Its not like the movies where everything fits into place and we all walk into the sunset with everything in place. Its not like tv where the crimes are always solved, justice served and problems fixed in twenty four minutes (30 if you add in the commercials).

Here is what I am going to say I know about me: I am worth caring about and loving… but I am a challenge for anyone who wants to take it up. I will scratch and fight, hug and kiss, hate and love all in a single breathe. If someone wants to love me – they will but it will be hard for awhile on both of us because I am full of fear that I am trying to learn to live and deal with. I am afraid that there is no one out there who will want to take up this challenge of loving me. I am hard to love – even my parents will admit that – but only because I have up a ton of walls and I am scared to let people in. And I am crazy… but that is another story.

The thing is… I have in the past not pushed but when I know a seperation will be coming, instead of enjoying every moment with that person I unknowning start to push… because I am upset they will hurt me. I have no desire to stop it because I want the people I care about to be happy and if that means them going some place else, then so be it. But I don’t have to be happy about it. In fact, it hurts having a friendship with someone I care about and knowning it will end in a few months time and that the friendship will most likely end for good, and that hurts. Because I can not control it… and I don’t want to but at the same time? You get the general idea.

So, yesturday sucked big time and I screwed up a friendship. If it is a permenant screw up – I don’t know but I feel weird and akward. I just want to run and hide from it. To not acknowledge how I keep messing up something good in my life.