Damages.

Recent (well, ok, not THAT recent, as it hit me in San Francisco which was almost a month ago now) personal revelation:

I choose unavailable and/or really terrible human beings to date because I have bought into the image of myself as a bad person so thoroughly that I think I'll break a decent man's heart simply by letting him know how terrible I am.

There's a lot going on in that sentence.

First we have the acknowledgment that I make piss-poor romantic decisions. I do. Don't argue with me about it. And admitting you have a problem is the first step to solving it, right? YEAH. So, I make piss-poor romantic decisions. Cf.: HISTORY.

The image of myself as a bad person is related to, but not wholly the same as, your run-of-the-mill low self-esteem issues. I do struggle with self-image for a variety of reasons, but the lingering and terribly hurtful idea that I am, at heart, simply a BAD PERSON is one of the most damaging ideas that has ever been pinned on me. And it has been pinned on me. I have always been a person that was in doubt of my own goodness (that's what a Catholic upbringing will do for you, folks) and that was reinforced in some ways by the absolute hedonism of my teenage years. But really: all teenagers are narcissistic hedonists, and I have largely learned to forgive myself for the mistakes I made and the people I hurt while I was figuring out how the world works.

But then I went and got married at 19 and that was a disaster for a lot of reasons but the thing that I took away most strongly from those three years is that I am a bad person. Some of that is probably deserved. I did marry him; I said marriage vows and promised my life to him and I probably knew somewhere in my heart that I was lying when I did that, and that was wrong. Untruth causes untold pain, and if I'd been honest, we wouldn't have hurt as much as we did. Ripping the band-aid off when it needs to come off often stings, but it's not nearly as bad as leaving whatever's underneath to rot and fester and be eaten away from lack of light and oxygen.

And the other piece of that period of my life is that I ended up taking a lot of flack for things that weren't really problems with me. I ended up taking the blame for a lot of things that were no-blame situations, and also I ended up taking a lot of blame for being an independent human being with thoughts and behaviors of my own that didn't necessarily jive with the expectations that he had for me. And that was incredibly damaging to my self-esteem, and also went a long way towards convicing me that I was a far worse person than I probably deserve to think of myself as.

After that, I fell in love with a manipulative narcissist of a different stripe, and in the end I failed at being his conscience. I was supposed to be. He told me that he felt like I was the only thing that could redeem him, but then he abandoned me (and our kid) and I still feel as if I failed him in some appreciable way, instead of the other way around.

So I have a lot of baggage around the idea that I'm not a good person, and it's all heavy, and I don't know how to put it down.

But being convinced that I'm a bad person means I choose bad people to get in relationships with. A good person doesn't deserve the kind of havoc that I'd wreak on their life, or their morals, or their emotions. I don't want to ruin anyone's life, so I choose people to date who's lives are already in shambles. I can't be accused of breaking any hearts if I never fall in love with people that love me back. Or are even capable of loving me back.

However, my metric for good/bad people is probably not nearly as infallible as I think it is. And it also doesn't give enough credit to good men that may want to be involved in my life. And it gives my moral denigration a little too much sway over the world.

It's pretty narcissistic of me to think that I could ever ruin someone's life simply by allowing them into my head, or my heart. Most people are not so damaged that they fall apart like I do, for one. And further, people are pretty darn resilient. No damage is irreparable. Not even the damage I currently see myself laboring under. And if I can fix myself, and my life, then anyone can.

Which is not to say that I'll be out rushing into relationships with nice guys so that they can fix me. But maybe that I shouldn't be quite so guarded all the time. And also I should really, really stop conflating genuine kindness with romantic intent. Because men and women really CAN just be friends. But that's a different recent revelation that I'll have to get to later.