What’s Wrong with Me?

5 min readMay 2, 2025

Spoiler Alert: Probably everything and nothing at the same time.

Let’s take inventory.

I sulk like a Victorian orphan when things don’t go my way. I overreact to minor inconveniences as if the universe has personally betrayed me. I need attention the way plants need sunlight, only less gracefully.
And if there’s a conversation, you can bet I’ll somehow make it about me — my thoughts, feelings, and incredibly specific and unnecessary opinions about something we weren’t even talking about.

So yeah. I’ve been asking myself a lot lately: What's wrong with me?

And not in the cute, self-deprecating "lol I'm so quirky" kind of way. More like: why do I keep pushing people away when all I want is to feel close to them? Why do I act like a child, then feel deep, ugly guilt for needing what I never really got?

The truth? I want to feel heard. I want to be seen. I want to feel safe. I want to be chosen.

But somewhere along the line, I learned to express that by…. well, by having small emotional fires and expecting other people to smell the smoke and come running.

Spoiler: they don't

The Pattern I Didn’t Want To Talk About

It always goes like this:

I meet someone. Friend, date, whatever. Or sometimes it’s not even someone new — it’s the ones that already existed like my family. I try to connect or reconnect, show up with this openness. I’m charming in that messy, over-sharing, ha-ha-my-trauma kind of way. I talk a lot — like, a lot — because silence makes me nervous and I want them to like me.

I give them everything too fast and in too much detail: thoughts, stories, the weird stuff most people save for month three of a relationship. I tell myself I’m just being “open,” but really, l’m just begging to be understood.

And for a little while, it works. They laugh. They listen. They say I’m “refreshing” or “real.”

But then it starts.

I misread something they say. I feel left out of a group chat. They take too long to reply to a message, and I spiral. Not outwardly, at first-no, I’m classy. I sulk with flair. I will say “I am fine.” with a period, which is the universal sign of war.

Eventually, there’s a blow-up. Or worse — a slow fade. They don’t get why I’m upset, I don’t know how to explain it without sounding like a walking red flag, and boom: another relationship in the emotional junkyard.

Another emotional car crash!!

And every time, I ask myself the same thing: What is wrong with me? Why cann't I just be normal?

But the deeper question, the one I’m actually afraid to ask, is this:

What if this is who I am? And what if that's too much for people?

Too Much, or Just Never Enough?

I’ve spent so much time trying to calibrate myself — shrink this part, soften that one, apologize in advance for my needs. I’ve edited myself mid-conversation like I’m walking through a social minefield, terrified that if I say the wrong thing, or too much of anything, I’ll lose someone again.

Sometimes I feel like I’m this emotional paradox — I want intimacy, but I’m terrified of needing it too much. I crave closeness, but when I get it, I test it. Not on purpose. But some part of me wants proof. Will you stay if I’m messy? Will you still like me if I make it about me for a minute too long? If I act like a child, will you respond with love — or walk away like everyone else eventually does?

There’s a kind of grief in realizing that no one ever really taught you how to handle your feelings — they just taught you to stop having them out loud.

And now, here I am: an adult on paper, a child in practice, trying to reverse-engineer emotional security from a pile of weird coping mechanisms and half-read self-help articles.