Telling the Truth or Playing Victim: Are the Two Mutually Exclusive?

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I recently wrote a nonfiction piece detailing that through most of high school I used boys as a distraction and filler from what I was missing from my home life. I did edits on it at places where it was just tooooo cringe even though to some degree it is supposed to be cringe because it's written from my voice at said time. Still, it was just....a lot in some places. I read back over it and realized it was mainly shit-talking my ex-boyfriends and not really expressing why I needed them or how I was using them. It was, but not enough, so I withdrew it from any magazines or journals I sent it to. I told the truth, but I was also making myself look better than everyone else.

And I have a bad habit of doing that. In a lot of situations when I'm telling the truth, I don't always express my part of the truth. That's unfair. At the end of the day, I know those people will probably never write about me and put it on a public platform. I didn't say they couldn't. I said it probably wouldn't happen, so whatever little platforms I get to discuss them, I should be fair.

They're victims too, just in different ways from me. So how do I go about fixing this? How do I learn to tell my story (and theirs) in the most neutral way possible while still having emotions and a good story? Simple. I listen to myself in my most humble state. In my humility, I tell the truth on equal and respectful grounds. The opening of the piece is truthful. It's just the rest that needs work. Wish me luck.

Bullethead

It is 4:16 on Sunday.

I have to be clocked in at Dollar General in 44 minutes. I don't want to clock in at Dollar General, but somebody's gotta do it. I don't have another persona that can go work for me and pretend to be okay. 

I killed all the other Andreas. They were getting in the way, but they were good liars, and now having all of them weighing inside of me, keeping me grounded instead of in space where I usually am, makes me want to cry.

I can't, though because now I have 42 minutes, and I already did my eye makeup. I am so, so tired. 

Please Don't Take Me Back

Please stop showing me things I no longer belong to. Stop making me cry at night. Stop making me de-forgive people after I've stopped being angry. You're relentless and cruel. You steal my laughter and reverse it like playing a song backwards. You shove it back into body, make it strangle me for your amusement. You pound my mind with sorrow until my headaches pound me back to numbness.

I'm begging you. Leave me alone. Stop making me log in to look at pages of people I no longer know; I no longer want to know. Stop dragging me through mud and rocks and broken glass because I've chosen to be in love. You make it so hard for me. I'm sorry for what you went through; I am, partly because I enjoyed you going through it, partly because I'm no longer in it with you.

You're miserable. You tell everyone. You write about it in my diaries. You keep postponing the therapist's consultation. You don't want me to forget.

Stop it. Fucking stop it. I'm trying to be wholly alright. You're trying to be holey, incomplete. You need excuses; I do not.

The only problem is that this isn't an open letter to another person, another force. It's to me. Let me live.