In Hiding

(Otherwise known as 'Previous Post Part II.')

I feel like I'm running in a circle. I hate harping on these deaths that have so destroyed my life, but I can't get away from them. I know I'm being annoying because that's all I talk about, all I think about, all I can see, but I don't know how to get out. It's like being stuck in a video game crash, constantly looping back to the time of death and/or destruction. And because I feel like I'm being annoying, I'm being quiet/shy/reserved/distant again. Nobody needs to hear me whine -- again -- about how stupid it all is (and yet, look what I'm doing right at this moment...).

So I'm emotionally in hiding. I spent all of four months truly out in the open and enjoying my life, and just when I was enjoying this newfound exuberant life that I didn't even know I was capable of, it all got taken away. I've hidden myself away -- again. It took over twenty years for me to feel safe enough to come out of my shell, and now it's all for naught.

And I wonder if that's not why I can't come up with anything artistic -- no choreography, no writing, no joy in dancing, nothing -- because on order to connect with people you have to be vulnerable, and right now I absolutely refuse. Nobody is allowed in anymore. I want them to be, but I can't bring myself to allow it. What if I just get close to someone and they die too? I legitimately cannot handle another death. An uncle attempted suicide not long ago, and though it was intercepted and he's still here, I almost had a nervous breakdown. I have to wall myself off; I have to not love anybody and then it won't hurt when they leave. I need to build this wall, I need to protect what remains of my heart if I want to survive. And even as I think this, I keep telling myself I can't afford to think like that. I can't go through life in a cocoon... but neither can I go through life when people keep dying and getting hurt and hurting each other and killing themselves. I can't live with or without you.

I miss the people I had before I went into hiding. But I can't connect with them. I'm too different now. I'm too pulled within myself, I'm too single-minded. I need too much of their love, and it's unfair of me to ask so much of them.

...I swore I would never say these things again.

I swore I would never succumb to feeling like nobody cared. I swore I would never shy away from people -- from my friends. I swore I would never put on the mask again. I swore I would breathe deeply in the richness of life. I swore I would live in full colour, with my heart on my sleeve. I swore I would never forget how loved I was.