Me and Fear

Fear is what crawls into my lonely bed at night and strokes my hair until I fall asleep. I wake up, tired from the thoughts that have been sprinting around my mind all night long. She spits in my face and laughs when my eyes widen in shock and horror, because… I’m scared.

These big feelings I have are not things I am used to. I love someone so much, but I need to remind myself more now than ever that this love is not all I am. We share a big portion of our lives together, but I’ll only ever be truly happy if I remind myself of who I am without him. I have to do the things I enjoy and remember what it was like in a time before him; I must be the girl I was before while maintaining the girl I am now.

I think I may have a tendency to hide. It’s easier to avoid and pretend things don’t bother you then speak them into the terrifying silence. At least, that’s what I have always believed. But I don’t give myself (or others) the chance to be heard when I just have the conversation in my mind. I can resolve issues all on my own, because I allow delusion to be the answer.

My boyfriend feels as though he does all the emotional labor between us. That I am just floating in the water that he is pushing along with all his strength. How terrible it felt to be so complacent. That the person I love with all the blood in me doesn’t feel as though they know it. I mean, I think we are still learning how to love one another, how to present our feelings in a way that can be translated to the other. But for him to say so, to beg for me to let the messy pomegranate seed insides of my thoughts and feelings bleed all over him… it hurt.

Am I capable of the love I have always dreamed of and imagined for myself? Right now, saying “I love you” feels like reading a script in a language I don’t yet speak. I have some kind of accent; perhaps my inexperience rubs off on the three word declaration. I have to roll the thought over my mind, push it down into my mouth, where I suck on its sweet and caramel warmth until forcing it from my lips.

I stare into Coca Cola brown eyes and sometimes catch my own reflection in his pupils. How I hate to see myself from that angle. My head comically enlarged, always a stray piece of hair sticking up from somewhere it shouldn’t. I want to wipe the adoration from all my features, so that I can’t see it on myself.

Last night, we laid in bed in silence for a while. Our hands intertwined, thumbs rubbing against one another in a dance only we know. Both of us examining our hands, together, separately, as a moving entity. His soft touch made me want to take my clothes off and lay beneath him.

Squish, squish, squish.

Instead, I got up and let him eat dinner with his roommates so I could walk home in the negative six degree weather to hangout with my own roommates. My nose was frozen and I had windburn on my ankle, but melting into the couch felt like the answer.

I am on my period, but sometimes between us I feel like there are walls that can never be climbed. It’s like I just can’t understand what’s going on with him. Something seems to be on his mind, but when I ask, he says nothing is going on. I can feel it though, in the air, and I know my intuition is usually spot on.

I have become the kind of girl I wished I never would be. “Do you really want me to stay? I want you to want me to stay.”

This is the time where we figure out what’s really going on. Can I be deep enough for him? Can we share moments that actually hurt and make us feel closer?

He has me googling “how to be vulnerable”.

So yes, I am pretty scared these days. Fear leaks from the fucking ceiling into my eyes. She runs through my veins with every sip of Redbull I shouldn’t be having. She pops up in my bank account, under insufficient funds. She laughs next to me on the couch when I tell friends about how great everything is. She is my best friend and pure enemy, stranger and confidant. I am just so fucking scared.

Anybody care?