praise and validation

Oh, sweet validation. It's my new favorite drug, but damn if it doesn't wear off faster than any drug I've ever tried... that makes it so much more addicting.

Praise hits you like a flashbulb going off, for a second you're completely blind to everything, but then you can make out shapes, and colors... soon it's just a few blurry spots visible if you look at something very blank, and in a few minutes you've got to close your eyes to get the slightest bit of it, and then it's just a memory..

So you need the words to keep coming, the smiles and the encouragement, the pseudo-pats-on-the-head like a toddler endlessly praised by its parents for the most basic of efforts... you need the flashbulbs to keep going off, you need to stay blinded to everything you hate about yourself, you need another hit, right now, where is it, give it here, you'll soak it up, desperate, goddamnit!!

But its been too long, and you can see again. Your vision has cleared, and you see the you you saw before. The remembering hurts worse than it would've had you never forgotten, and everything feels about as worthless as you now recall that you are.

But burning in the back of your eyes, if you squeeze them shut it glows, is the memory. The blind feeling, like floating and everything's okay, and you're valuable on your own. It's there, but just enough to mock you, taunt you, be an obnoxious little tease that has you dying for more. You want it so bad, it takes over your mind, turns your brain into a machine with a singular, ultimate, borderline-celestial goal: get the flashbulbs back, baby. You can do it. You can do anything, anything I said! Do it now.

And you do. You do anything, and everything, say anything, love anything, sell your soul, eat your heart out, twice a day and three times on sunday, whatever it takes to get the feeling back. To get the praise, the love, the validation, the flashbulbs going off in your face that block the demons and mean you're worth something.

You need to be worth something, because worth equals living and worth isn't inherent, at least not in you. You need to live. To matter. to be. To breathe, and you can't do that unless they tell you you're enough. You're never enough, it's never enough.

So it just keeps replaying over and over again in your mind, and it will forever - never enough, be enough, be worth it, be something, be EVERYTHING, otherwise you're nothing at all.