Walking Disaster

Logically, you can’t like everybody, nor can you be liked by everybody. But being unliked somehow feels more personal than unloved. There’s more choice in like – like means wanted and love means needed. However, if you’re not loved by a person or people, it’s understood that feelings can’t be forced, so that blow gets cushioned in a way. If you’re disliked it feels caused by some aspect of yourself or your personality that is the deal breaker, because it feels rarer to be disliked. When you examine what makes someone unlikable to you, then it leads to even more insecurity and anxiety once you try to determine what it is about yourself that is such a turnoff to friends, significant others, or even family members. 

Which leads to the question – what about when people love you but don’t like you? Is it a personality flaw or just missed vibes and miscommunication? Trying to fix it can lead to an added level of desperation that makes you even more of a nuisance. Not only a nuisance to others, but to yourself, because now there’s a feeling that you’ve let yourself down by chasing affection from people who don’t want to give it. That desperation double down leaves me feeling pathetic, leading to more chasing and more desperation. It’s like one giant tornado of self-loathing. 

The good news is that there will always be people in life who won’t make you feel like this. I have a solid handful of friends who have never made me question if they want me around or not, and I love them for it. The issue is mainly around family members and romantic options – and yes, I am all too aware of how Freudian that is. These iffy relationships also force me to pose the question: do I want to be liked or do I just need proof that I can be? With my friends who make it clear that they do like and love me, in a weird way I almost invalidate that, whether because they are too similar to me or because they have known me long enough they won’t be impartial or separate. And that thought might just give some insight into where my own self-esteem is at as well… keep in mind the name of this blog…

I am constantly oscillating between the need to stop putting energy towards people without reciprocation or feeling lonely and desperate enough to text seven people at once just to feel some validation. I feel like I can’t bring it up with the actual people because then the Hawthorne effect applies. If I approach the subject with them and they change their behavior, I will never know if it’s genuine or if it’s influenced by my guilt trip. Can you tell I’m spiraling? 

Maybe I’m assuming my own importance, but at the end of the day, maybe everyone feels something like this. Or maybe it’s just me, which would really fucking suck. I know I’ve hit my “maybe” word count for this post, but one last one: maybe it’s my own need to be liked that makes me unlikeable. And if that’s not enough irony, I don’t know what is.