I’ve never been….

I’ve never been the kind of girl people fall in love with. I’ve never been proposed to. Only one man has ever told me he loved me, and this has proved to be so patently untrue it is laughable. I always try to pick myself up, convince myself it’s THEM and not ME, and go on, but it just happens again and again and again. I have never been in a relationship where I wasn’t cheated on. My current relationship is my longest running one, beating the next one by a full 4 years and 8 months (my current relationship has lasted 5 years), and for the past 4 years of that time I feel like I stay here because this is all I am going to get, all I deserve, all I should hope for. At some point, I HAVE to acknowledge that it’s me that is the problem.
I have a friend who seems to have this invisible power to draw people to her. And they fall in love with her. In fact, the one person in the world that I love above all others, that I would give up everything to be with, but can’t or won’t ever return my feelings, told HER he could fall in love with her. Damn. That HURTS.
In many ways, she is just like me. Depressed, lonely, alone, with feelings of failure and inadequacy. So what does she have that I lack so severely?
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate her for this. Quite the opposite, in fact. I love her even more. For telling me. For being HER. For not changing who she is for anyone else. She is the friend of my soul, the sister I never had. I feel like I have known her forever, I can tell her anything, I NEED her. But then, I guess a lot of people feel that way about her. She can’t help it if these people are feeling this for her. She can’t even imagine why. But, I have to admit, I am jealous. Why? I probably don’t have any reason to be. Maybe I am so starved for someone to love me, and feeling so unworthy of that same love, that the thought of someone else being told by this person then that person that they love her is a little unbearable.
I feel lost. Alone. Useless. Defenseless against the onslaught of feelings.
I would have preferred to stay the way I have been for months now. Without any feelings at all, numb, not even able to cry. But I know from experience that when I get to the point where I can’t FEEL, I may be well on my way to something bigger and darker. And I can’t afford to do that right now. If I land in the hospital now, I doubt I will have my children when I get out. And they are the only thing that I have done or have in my life that is worth living for. I am hanging on by a thin, stretched, gossamer thread.
And all I can think about is how I can change myself so that I can be loved. I don’t want or need to be just like her, I know that is a useless endeavor. But I wish I could figure out how to make my outside self more like the me I feel I am on the inside. The me no one knows, or cares to know. Because I don’t know how to let them.