week 23: hidden

i have been afraid my entire life.

my earliest memories are of fear, i have been told stories about my childhood, i have lied, lied for no real reason whatsoever save that my perception of events, or truth or whatever looked so terrifying that i would say things that were not true in hopes of avoiding consequence.

i have run, been running, for as long as i can remember.

all of the choices that i have made have been reactions, not plans. i am living in a past that is depression while agonizing over what might happen tomorrow.

that fear has, has distilled over the years into anger, despair, stubbornness, sex and smoking pills and bottles of every-and-anything. i have bled to feel and i laughed at death while scorning life and hating myself so much that all i wanted to do was figure out some fucking way of huring the world as badly as it had hurt me.

i rejected everything and everyone before they could reject me, i found relationships that i knew would end. i opted out, i lost myself in things that made me apart from anything meaningful.

i have been soul sick, i have been heart sick, and i am so very, very tired.

i am so afraid of, of everything i guess, that i have never really made any honest and full effort to live a self-actualized life, to really try doing what i think i love, and make use of the gift that i have been given, regardless of it was some part of a bigger plan or just random chance.  i hate, hated, working on that, myself so much that i tried to burn myself into nothing. i tried to self-destruct in the loudest longest messiness and painful way i could imagine. and i was so scared of feeling anything other than miserable or numb that i... well, you've been reading about all that now here for years.

i am still afraid. i am still numb, and hurt, and lonely but.
i am learning.

i'm beginning to understand that is not the only option, the only way to be.

so now, along with all of what has come before, i get to be hopeful, and i get smile and i, i get to find out who i really am.

i have a chance to finally figure out how become the me i somehow missed.