Facade

12 || confront me

~ Alejandra ~

Avoidance is a beautiful thing.

It's one of a human being's most valuable coping mechanisms.

The brain and the body act together, protecting us from something we wouldn't be able to handle facing.

One known yet undocumented fact about human beings, regardless of how much some deny it, is that every one of them is avoidant.

Everyone including the people like teachers or doctors or saints merely lacking their wings and halos who preach to anyone that will listen how avoiding your problems isn't right or healthy.

I say, fuck what they say.

My opinion is probably due to the fact that over the years, I have become a very proud and adamant avoider.

I procrastinate every homework assignment until the deadline. I drink, sometimes all by myself, when I want to let loose or forget. I dissociate during sex so I don't have to face the reality that I've let yet another man on top of me.

Avoidance is proof that there's always a way out of things that you don't want to deal with. Some being things that you genuinely can't deal with.

Unfortunately for us as a species, there's always a drawback to it.

See, the most inconvenient part about avoidance is that whatever you're trying not to face or feel will eventually end up right in front of you.

The deadline for the assignment always comes to pass. The alcohol always dissipates, allowing my brain to return to its coherent and sober state. The state of detachment will subside once whoever I was with takes their crushing weight off of me and a little piece of my spirit along with them.

It's inevitable, no matter how much time passes in between the start of the avoidance and the drawback of the confrontation.

My current avoidance of Gabriel has been going on for the past week and a half.

After spending the Sunday after the party recuperating at Nayah's, I knew from the second I opened my eyes to the sound of my alarm on Monday morning that I couldn't handle seeing him.

The clock blared like a siren, warning me to stay home and hide out in the warmth of my sheets for just one more day.

But I'm a liar.

I know that about myself, so I know that I'll say one day and then it becomes two. That's when two days becomes a week.

So, I sucked it up and went to school anyways but, down every hall I turned, I was constantly worried that I'd run into him at any given moment.

Even after seven periods of avoiding and hiding, by last period, I still wasn't able to stomach the thought of going into psychology.

Literally.

On days where I thought I could do it, where I thought I'd had a good enough day to face the inevitable, I'd overthink to the point where I spent last period puking in the bathroom rather than sitting next to Gabriel in psych class.

I've been doing this from all of last week until Wednesday of this one.

But school wasn't the only place I was paranoid.

No matter where I went, I was still vigilant for his lurking figure. He knows where I work and that means everywhere is fair game.

Nowhere is safe.

Every time the sensor signaled someone's entrance into the store, my adrenaline would spike until a split second later when I saw that it was anyone but him.