Love, (A Series)

2.12.16 // Love, A Scared Girl

I'm scared of a lot of things. Spiders. Heights. Bridges. Water. All those natural phobias that are spoken a million times out of a million and one other mouths that do not belong to me. I'm also afraid of things less tangible. Unhappiness. Not being good enough. Loneliness. Death. Also thoughts that invade the minds of many in the surrounding darkness of another sleepless night. My fears aren't uncommon, but they're terrifying and haunting all the same.

I've always had an internal battle with my demons. They seem to, sadly and unfortunately, never fade away. They pop up like daisies and hibernate like bears whenever they please to. No warning. No red flags. Just the train wreck impact in a split second without the option to catch any footing or to brace for anything. And as many times as I get back up and brush off the bruises, I never quite stop looking back over my shoulder for the next black hole, the next crash and burn. It's like my life has become a cat and mouse game and I'm losing to it. Every hit weakening me to my knees and at some point, you get tired of it all. And that frightens me to the fucking core.

Some fears are easier to overcome than others. (Although even that sentence is easier said than ever done.) Walk across the Golden Gate. Jump head first into a pool. Climb a tall mountain. And as insanely difficult as all of those sound, they seem so minuscule to the feelings of tackling things that aren't as palpable. And you try. You really do. You try to surround yourself with things that bring a smile to your face. You try to do so much to be seen as someone worth seeing. You try to make friends, to avoid falling into an endless stream of negative, haunting thoughts. But you always end up so short of everything.

Growing up in a small town blinds you to the real world. One day you think you have so many friends and the next you're two years into college and you haven't made a single companion that's lasted more than a quarter. And the sinking feeling swells up inside. That you have so much trouble putting yourself out there. That you have built so many walls around your heart you can't seem to break them down for anyone. That you're afraid of being alone forever. And that's not even the worst part. It's watching everyone around you who can pick up a million people in seconds. It's seeing them go in and out of your life because they have so many other options to be with that isn't you. It's hearing that it's so fucking easy to find someone if you just talk to them, if you open up. It's knowing that you can't and then people see you as some girl who isn't even trying but the the saddest thing is she's trying so hard it hurts. I'm physically lonely, but emotionally there's a tsunami of unwanted company in the form of my worst nightmares.

I don't even know where I'm going with this. One minute I'm trying to study for a psychology midterm with static noise of an NCIS marathon in the background, the next I'm breaking down and everything seems to be falling apart all around me. I'm a mess, but that's all I've ever known to be. I was a ticking bomb masked by temporary happiness to even realize how much she was in danger of her own thoughts. The lost of an innocence in the worst way. And now that that majority of the impact has left me embedded with a million pieces of shrapnel, I'm waiting for the aftershocks. And maybe that's why I'm so closed off. That I know there's more explosions within me and I'm pushing everyone away from the crossfire so the only causality in the end remains at one.

I'm scared and maybe that's a feeling that will never cease to exist in my mind. Maybe it's a feeling that's always been so dominant all along, it just took years of hurt and heartbreak and sadness to reveal it's true potential of destruction. And I'm just so tired, another feeling I can't seem to stray away from. I'm lonely and afraid and exhausted. What a lethal combination.

Love,

A scared girl.