Loving Them for Them

I used to watch my aunt cry at almost anything she watched. I would think, “How are you crying at this right now?” Then I got older and started crying at things. I’m still rewatching Criminal Minds. Aside from the newer episodes I had told myself I wouldn’t rewatch this show until I got a dog. Then I discovered owning a dog is not for me, at least at this time. After I got caught up on the new seasons I decided to start from the beginning. So of course it is my entire personality right now (though at this point I’m always influenced by this show).

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again it’s the relational aspect of this show that makes it so meaningful to me. There are many reasons why I spent most of my life wanting to be a cop or on the spectrum, but it was the relationship aspect that I wanted the most. I craved the community. I wanted a job that gave me people that I would spend hours with and who would become my people.

Even before I experienced all the loss, I craved community. I grew up as an only child and spent most of my life around adults or alone. I say often that I do good alone. I go days without interaction. Sometimes the only human interaction I have is the couple of days I am in the office. As much as my “dream day” can easily be a day where I have zero interaction, I need people.

I have spent an overly isolated life. It can do something to you. The thing about spending a life of solitude is it is where you tend to go back to for comfort. The tricky part is a lot of the time it’s what is needed. I struggle with feeling comfortable around people. I’m sure a lot of that has to do with me being in environments where I have felt unsafe. I find myself feeling the closest to myself and those I’ve lost when I am alone. The older I get the more I see parts of me that are directly connected to how I was raised. I have spent much time trying to correct a lot of it, but there are parts that I am grateful for.

I was talking with a friend who is reading a book I read a few years ago. We are both in a similar situation when it comes to how we approach relationships and our sexuality. As she’s been reading this book she’s sent me quotes where she felt seen. This book gave me different perspectives from other people’s experiences with asexuality. Though I am glad to personally know two other people like me, it isn’t a common thing. Even though the three of us experience and feel things differently knowing I’m not alone helps with the feeling that I’m made wrong.

I’ve always been a “safe person.” When I was younger my friends’ parents would thank me for being nice to the younger siblings. I never added to the typical picking on the younger siblings where maybe other friends did. I’ve always seen people as people. I’ve always (well aside from the depressed teenage era of hating everyone) loved people. I want to know what makes someone the way they are. None of us are alike and there’s something so special about that.

There are things you can only learn from people and their experiences. I think it’s why I have such a love for television. Again, it’s why I have such a love for Criminal Minds. Since I have had such an isolated life, television has been a way of giving me people and life experiences. I think there is something special in having people to look up to or aspire to be. Since I didn’t have too many people in my life that I wanted to be like (more like who I didn’t want to be), I’ve taken my favorite characters and their traits that I look up to.

I have spent a lot of time accepting that I have emotions let alone a lot of them. Too much of my life has been spent feeling embarrassed that I have normal feelings. Looking back it makes me feel sad. It’s only been the last year or so that I have let myself embrace it all. The parts of shows that I cry at are a lot of happy scenes. It’s the scenes where after a long case the episode ends with the characters eating together and celebrating. It’s usually the parts where love is being portrayed between a group of people.

Love makes me sappy. The fact that I can admit that is crazy because at one point I would rather have died than admit that. Feeling anything would make me feel weak. I think because when you love you can feel exposed. When you don’t have a lot of love being reciprocated it can be draining or scary.

I think about how different life would have been if I had a good support system for most of it. Even with the one I have now, it gives me the confidence and stability that is necessary for everyday life. It all goes down to them loving me for me. When you have even just a few people where you don’t have to question their love for you it allows you to love others better. You’re not always going to have the love reciprocated in the same way but that doesn’t mean you have to stop loving.

Love truly heals so much. It’s why I’ve fought to love when I’ve had many reasons not to. Even during the times when I was losing more than not, it was any sense of love that kept me going. Most people only need to believe that they are lovable. That the parts of them that they might hate or feel are annoying doesn’t make them any less lovable.

“You know, we forget half of what they teach us in school, but when it comes to the torment and the people who inflicted it, we’ve all got an elephant’s memory.” – Derek Morgan