Dead Honest: The Anti-Chaos Issue [July Issue #1]
I don't want to be valuable anymore. I just want to feel loved.
This month’s theme is Anti-Chaos.
Which, honestly, feels hilarious considering the quiet chaos I’ve been in lately:
Grieving the part of me that always needed to be useful.
Wanted to be seen. Admired. Liked.
The version of me who was so bloody good at performing self awareness, healing and intuition that I forgot what it felt like to just… exist. Without there being a ‘point’ to it.
Here’s the truth:
I don’t want to be impressive anymore.
I don’t want to be the smartest in the room.
I don’t want to turn my pain into something I can sell for an unreasonable angel number (that could never reflect my ‘worth’ anyway).
I don’t want to be known for how well I handle things.
I just want to be okay.
I don’t want to be valuable anymore.
I just want to feel loved.
Not liked for what I can offer. Not praised for what I survive. Just loved. As I am.
And the hard part is—I have that.
I have a husband who still looks at me like the first time he saw me, ten years in. Two little humans who think I’m the best mumma in the universe and want to be around me every second of the day—even when I’m hiding in the pantry trying to breathe.
I hear them playing with their daddy, full belly laughs bouncing off the walls and I feel something - like the world hits pause for a second, and I’m just there, soaking it up. It makes me so emotional every time.
I’m not there performing. Not creating. Not doing anything. I’m just there. Surrounded by so much pure love.
What I’m working on now is focusing on that, instead of all the places I don’t feel it.
Like the mums at playgroup who never speak to me in real life, but watch every single one of my stories like they’re collecting data.
I keep asking myself, why am I giving them my energy? Why am I still trying to be chosen by people who don’t know how to love me the way I want to be loved?
I’m tired of chasing love in places that can’t give it.
I’ve done it my whole life.
With caregivers who were emotionally unavailable, or who smacked me for being too loud, then smacked me again for crying about the first smack; but told me they loved me anyway.
It was a strange kind of love. Fragile. Full of fear.
As a kid, I always pictured love as a big, loud kitchen table at Christmas.
Instead, it was eggshells and silence and tension so thick I could feel it in my chest. Telling everyone around me I loved them, and wanting to be helpful so that it would maybe protect the ‘peace’.
I think that, maybe, I’ve been conditioned to seek out that same feeling in other places - because it’s what’s familiar. Even when my brain is screaming, this isn’t the love I want.
But now I know the difference.
And I’m learning how to choose it.
I don’t want to be valuable.
I just want to be loved.
And I am.
I already am.
I just need to keep reminding myself of that whenever I try to ‘fix’ it with a false sense of success or people who can barely look in my direction.
Maria x
✦ Read the Rest of The Anti-Chaos July Issue #1:
→ Cult Cravings: For the sensory obsessions and secret comforts we romanticise our survival with
→ Note to Self: The emotional fog between burnout and clarity, written in real time
→ Dead Honest: No fluff. No filler. Just the truth you’re too tired to dress up
→ Moodswings: July’s emotional forecast (spoiler: you’re not actually losing it)
→ Directors Cut: When the dream comes true but doesn’t feel like you thought it would
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