just a fix.

you know how when you were in high school you would make some extravagant gesture to get a boy to notice you, and then you end up crying into your pillow, feeling like a fool because he didn't notice [or pretended to not notice] or even worse he did notice and didn't care.
if you were like me you were pining for him, building him up in your mind, making him the end all be all. 

cue the icy shock of reality.  devastating. humiliating. ultimately making you feel less lovable, less worthy, less valued. unless you are decidedly the most confident human being in the world, you've felt the sting of this particular type of defeat.

and here's the thing, when you're 16 years old and you make yourself look like an idiot all for a boy, you tell yourself that S O M E D A Y things will be different. you'll grow up and change stop being so awkward and embarrassing and desperate. you see all these people around you and you think, "wow, they've got it made, they can carry on a full conversation without sounding like a total moron, one day I'll be just like them".

**if you're anything like me you suffer from the delusion that every word from your mouth is some form of comedic genius...and then it leaves your mouth and you realize that you actually just sound like some kind of off-beat combination of early '00s Amanda Bynes and late '00s Bill Cosby, so it's mostly just confusing and awkward**

and then something happens. lots of things about you change, but mostly you just stay the same. because you are you. growing up isn't a magical remedy that erases everything awkward and replaces it with tact and class and appropriate behavior. no. you stay awkward, what changes is your shell. it's like my friend Claire said to me the other day, "we just get better at pretending". and it's true,

we just get better at hiding the fact that we're all just jonesin' for our next fix of one another's attention. 

we're just a bunch of addicts hoping that next time we're the one's getting the laugh or the look. and to make matters worse there's social media, so we're also hoping to get the like or the comment.

 in the land of plenty we're all starving for more. 

i've been struck recently by the reality that a lot of people don't outgrow the strivings that have always made them feel like an idiot. old habits die hard and i think these habits die the hardest. that need to be at the top of someone else's affections. the need to be someone's #1. we all feel the longing to be tops and the pang of feeling like we're the bottom of the barrel.

the thing is, i'm 23 years old. i've lived a lifetime of feeling like i'll never measure up. a lifetime of looking like a fool. a lifetime of being a try hard. with every laugh or compliment, i realize more and more that no amount of attention will ever fill the longing. i don't want to be addicted to the affection of other people who, like me, will never measure up. 

i think there should be a group for people like me. Attention Seekers Anonymous. i think if we were honest we'd all have to be part of it. we'd all have to sit in a circle and talk about the gaping hole in the middle of our beings. it's like a tire with a hole in it, you can fill it with air all day, but the air leaves as quickly as it enters. i think if we do things right the Attention Seekers Anonymous would also be known as the body of Christ. cause at the end of my longings, strivings, searchings, hopings, jonesings [not a word. so sue me], Jesus is there. always there. filling the gap over and over again. waiting for me to remember that people will never be enough. i will never be enough. this world will never be enough. 

color me thankful that there's more to this life than other people. 

xo. ab.