The Grand Illusion

You can acknowledge your shortcomings, traits that could improved upon, weaknesses that could transform into strengths. Fixing them, however, is something entirely different.

I’m more than well aware of my issues with vulnerability, letting people in (not in the Biblical sense). It’s hard for me, and it has been for the longest time. When I was still in therapy, it was something I was trying to work on. Sometimes I felt like I was making strides, but I think I was just becoming more self-aware about my problems rather than actually taking the time to fix them. A lifetime of issues with trust and abandonment isn’t something that can be fixed within six months of therapy. I’m not quite sure it can ever be fixed.

I hung out with a good friend last night, and she delicately yet bluntly hit me with a hard truth about myself—I am approachable, I am likable, but I’m also unreachable. I have invested so much energy in convincing the rest of the world I am an open book that the ultimate illusion I painstakingly crafted only worked on me.

One thing about being a loner is you’re adjusted to talking to yourself. With no one to provide any additional feedback for any invading thought that seeps into your mind, the only facts you believe to be true are the ones that are in your head. So that strong front I strategically place in front of me as if I am a well-put together human being is the only thing anyone sees so when I have a full on mental breakdown and I have no idea how to reach out to anyone, it can seem jarring when I send a cry for help. I’m a Sasquatch-type character—I don’t come out very often, and when I do it’s for brief moments before a lack of response reinforces the idea that I’m a problem and I go back into the forest, keeping a low profile as to not bug anyone, left to my own devices to figure it out on my own. In one of our last sessions, my therapist asked me who do I turn to when I need a shoulder to lean on. I told her no one. My problems are my own, the last thing anyone needs is to be burdened by my own neuroses.

These days I feel like no one knows me. Part of that is because I feel like I barely know myself anymore. The Pandemic has made me turn inward further, I have become more reclusive, and because of that I just feel like it’s easier to keep it to myself, to be alone. I have a lot of things in the air, tangible plans on the back burner. I haven’t fully expressed these things to the people I am closest to. I don’t know why, either. It’s not like they would object. My best guess is I’ve convinced myself I don’t think they’d care.

Friendships that have slipped through the cracks because I didn’t make the effort to reach out, relationships that failed before they began because I kept my partners at arm’s length emotionally. For a long time I blamed the guys for leaving me because they didn’t know how great I was or were shallow, but I think they left because they sensed I wasn’t emotionally available and found someone who was. I know it’s a defense mechanism I pull out the minute I sense someone getting close, or otherwise find something about them I cannot trust. You can’t get hurt if you have a twelve foot barrier between you and any other person. It’s also an act of defiance—if I appear I don’t care, I can’t get hurt either.

It’s me trying to save myself, to make up for the times the people I trusted couldn’t save me. For the times I was too young to save myself. It’s why I don’t rely on anyone. I’m the only one I can trust to save me because no one else can, and somewhere in the fucked up depths of my subconscious, I don’t think anyone else would if I asked.