Love Troll

I’ve stopped being convenient. I’m no longer easily seen. You can’t just swing by. If you’re coming to see me you will have made the trip exclusively for that purpose. I’m not on the way to anything. I am my own destination.

I tried to curry your attentions. To be close by. Available. Open. Interested. I listened to your stories and I wanted to tell some of mine. That wasn’t on the menu. A steady diet of isolation with no end in sight caused my appetite to wane. I’m no longer hungry for leftovers.

Overwhelmed by all of the choices I just shut down. Left to my own devices with no resources and little support I crumbled. No one noticed. I kept on. Doing the bare minimum of living. Wondering where everyone went. Waiting.

Then one day I stopped. Just let it all go. Watched the world go by a window I no longer recognized as mine. Bids for intimacy rang hollow. I stood in the street and did my best to respond to what felt less like a conversation and more like a full frontal attack. Refused the obligation of the reciprocal invitation and just gave up.

No one noticed. So I began to disappear. Even when I was mostly transparent it wasn’t apparent. I disintegrated altogether but somehow couldn’t manage to actually be gone. I haunted my own home, drifting across time like a skater on a slippery patch. No purchase, just sliding past. Without the ability to steer or a clear destination I kept striding. Despite a distinct lack of progress I kept going through the motions as if the gears might catch.

I watched everyone make plans for a future I couldn’t believe in. It came to my attention at one point that none of their plans included me. Everyone coupled off and hunkered down. I was left rolling across the surface, no groove. Just a single pringle shaped like it belonged in a bunch but left aside.

I thought maybe I could change my shape. Be less brittle, less formed to need support to stand, more sturdy and built to last. Turns out I could change but only into something ugly that no one wants. Like an orthopedic shoe I am necessary but not attractive. Whatever design details I had were subsumed by the need for structure and I became perfunctory and reliable.

All my life they said that’s what they wanted but when I turned into what they told me was right it just left me empty and they all pulled away. I did what they asked me to do. It didn’t make them love me. They just pressed their advantage. Which made me love them less.

All this to say I have given up trying. I no longer invite them in. I am still lonely. But I know now it is better than cruel company. I have accepted my fate. Weaponized my disability. And I’ve moved on.

Maybe one day I’ll find friends again. I might learn to trust. I sing songs about opening up, letting the day in. The part where I am greeting these imaginary companions sounds somewhat sarcastic. I know loving myself is the key but how can I love what you have so eloquently described as worthless?

I have to devalue you and your opinion of me. I’m learning to have my own ideas, not the opposite of yours because that’s the same thing turned upside down. I’m learning to see myself through my own experience of me. And oddly as I rise in my own esteem my compassion for your lack of love also grows. I see you in a less harsh light. I feel sorry for you. For your lack of humanity and incapacity to see me. Really see me and hear my words.

I am visible to myself. When I turn sideways I still disappear but there is a glow around my outline. I can see what you cannot. I can see in the dark. From the front I look whole. There is a familiar shape. I recognize myself. Then I turn to the side and see how broken and abandoned I am. My guts are outside my body. I am a troll living under my own bridge. But even trolls deserve love.