A soliloquy in typeface

A shadow glided across my path today. Just after the tiniest section of dust was wiped off of my old hope chest, the building next door exploded in a cloud of dust, burying that chest and maybe even breaking a corner or two off. I came back to my solitude with just the light of the tv and less to be hopeful about than when I headed out last night, and without even comprehending the weight i was sagging under, a solitary tear finally leaked out. After all this time, I was able to cry. Although genuine sadness was overflowing in my gut and threatening to be choked out into some sort of weak, high sound, my tears leaked out, slowly, one at a time, the dark room silent except for a light sniffling that only vaguely betrayed the Kilimanjaro of emotion underneath. I could not explain this emotion to myself; the source, or the trigger. 

I feel as if, at barely more than two decades of life, my bones are weary and complaining of age, slowly surrendering to the load they carry and buckling beneath it. I've seen a couple of final episodes of tv shows that I grew up with lately, and I feel like those finales, like my script has somehow run out. Other cast and crew members are moving on, but all of my best is lies in the past, walking farther and farther in the opposite toward a horizon I myself can never again reach. I am the actor who caught a lucky break on a show that ran for a "good, long time" but who will never again be a mere shade of my former glory. I am well into my sixteenth minute, the still-undesired, future cat lady, or at the least, the future of failure. That's me, carrying failure into the 21st century. I experience no inherent worth, save that I am still alive, although the epilogue to that itself is something too terrible and awful in my mind's eye to bring out and examine for more than a few seconds. I want to know what I have to offer the world, because, short of hearing the same old flattery from my mother and my girlfriends (who are compelled to give such common answers by our varying relationships), I have never heard such things even falsely stated.

Just once, I would like to hear what I have to offer a man. I have never been treated by any men as a woman with much to offer, instead treated only once as a sex toy and once as a physical painkiller for loneliness (I never took the former up on his offer, but I certainly did take the latter up, with full support of family and most friends). I have been "the girl next door" or "the sister" to be used and abused in times of trouble, but as a woman, I have only been told by men that I am undesirable. I have been told that I would and will have to be desperate to find a man who would actually either be desperate enough himself, or lower his standards enough to be with me. All around me, my friends, enemies, acquaintances, and random strangers are falling in love and dealing with relationships, while my only relationship lies far in the past, an unfair, desperate, and hurtful one. And every once in awhile, I may occasion an awkward flirtation or crush from some sad, pathetic person who likes me because I was the only girl who would talk to him. It sounds callous, but I don't want to have to settle for someone who I am not attracted to physically, emotionally, or even spiritually, just because I was nice and therefore the object of affection of a desperate person. I don't want to be goodenough; I want to be good enough. 

So here I sit, pondering my supposed worth that is called into question more than it is affirmed. It's so easy for people to say that self worth should not be found in others' approval or disapproval, but let me ask in return, how can one experience self worth and self value when it was never demonstrated to that person in the first place? All men may be created equal, but that doesn't mean that each man fully grasps that when repeatedly beaten and kicked to the ground. Some men believe they are dogs because that is precisely how they have been treated.

I would love so much for the men in my life that I respect most (not the ones who are desperate for a woman, period, but those who can easily take their pick at a whim), for these men to dare to lift me up to a level that, in their own ways, they have deigned to reserve for themselves and those "choice steaks" that they toy with selecting. Even my brother, whose advice and words I respect so much, shrinks away from the intensity of these avouchments, but weakly resorts to the same old jeers. Just one conversation where he would unashamedly fortify my self image of value to men would mean so much; however, the significance is lost on him, as well as the need and the longing I feel for such a conversation to take place. 

So here I soliloquize, in typeface . . . still pondering, "What, if anything, do I have to offer a man, or the world?"

MOOD: jaded