A Book Too Close To Home

I started writing a very personal entry and realized, I don't want to put out my personal secrets for everybody just yet. But I did want to write them down.

I don't do well journaling. I tend to focus on what's bothering me and then I feel that I am dwelling on it. It's when I stop journaling that I start to actually move on and feel better. 

But I miss writing. I tried a YouTube channel but I don't like feeling like I have to be made up to get my thoughts out to the world. I'd rather sit on my laptop, make up free with my hair up in a messy bun and you be none the wiser.

So here I am. Back to blogging.

I'm reading a book that is making me uncomfortable because I can relate to it so deeply. And not for good reasons. 

It's Carrie Fisher's The Princess Diarist. And without diving into what part I can relate to....let me just say that reading her diary entries when she was 19 years old, filming Star Wars and obsessing about her older costar Harrison Ford (whom she was having an affair with) is hitting a little too close to home. 

As much as I would love to say that I too had an affair with Harrison Ford, no, that's not it. But when I was 19, I too was obsessed with my older man and the feelings she expresses in the diary, are ones I could have written as well. 

I don't imagine that I am alone though. I don't think any of us were our best at 19, almost 20 years old. Love was bigger, exaggerated almost. Those throes of first love are what shape many of us, for good or bad.

But what may not be true for everyone, is how undeserving some of us feel at the time. 

One entry just killed me: "He'll end up someday having only one thing in common with you and that'll be a shared sense of contempt and disgust for you."

Now, I don't remember hating myself to that extent, but in my relationship, I felt the need to prove myself worthy of him. Sadly, I chose a man who could never be pleased and from there my story varies greatly from Carrie Fisher's. 

The need to please. The fear of failing. The fear of him leaving because you aren't enough.

I hate the phrase, "daddy issues" but we were both abandoned by our fathers at a young age, Carrie Fisher and I. I think she saw her father more than I saw mine. But it's a little off putting to see a women with a similar start in life have the same sort of issues with a man 15 years later. 

I really do hate that phrase. I never thought that I had "daddy issues" but I do. Although, that phrase makes it sound cute. I have abandonment issues. Let's be clear here. Those issues run deep.

My guy may have been not so great, but I don't think Harrison Ford was a bad guy. I think he probably had no idea what was going on in her head. She admits to playing it off like it wasn't a big deal at the time. And she makes it clear that he didn't know how inexperienced she was with men. I wonder if he'll ever read her book. 

I've had a boyfriend obsess about me and I don't think I ever want to read his diary at the time of our relationship. (if he wrote one)

I'll most likely finish the book tonight. And I'll never look at Han & Leia the same way again.

But I don't think that's a bad thing.