we-should-open-up

[we-should-open-up]

The worst part of having a crush on a best friend.

1. The only person you want to talk to about it and obsess over about it so them.

2. You have a golden chest of dirty jokes and playful humor that, now with blossoming feelings, makes you hold back because you’re worried they’re too flirtatious.

3. When they do something to upset you, the only person you want to comfort you and talk the shit with is them.

4. You feel like you’re lying. Constantly. You shared everything with eachother now... now it’s just secrets and smokescreen.

5. Being happy for them, even when it hurts the most.

6. Confusion about if this is romantic feelings or intense platonic feelings.

7. Overall loving someone who doesn’t want you to love them that way, and respecting their feelings about it—and also learning to respect your own feelings.

8. Missing them in an empty way that continues on, even when you’re hanging out with them. Why can’t things just go back to normal?

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Stop trauma dumping on your service staff. Idgaf that ur mom just died, or your brother, or that u just got evicted, bitch. Sorry ur life sucks, but that’s how it is for everyone. Sheeeeee

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Why is it that whenever I feel like someone is catching feelings for me, I start hard-core friend-zoning them even if I have feelings for them too? Like why do I gotta self-sabotage a potential relationship??

And then if I don’t do that, and I actually try, why do I feel so guilty/uncomfortable if I do get into a relationship?? And despite really trusting/liking someone, why do I break-up with them almost the second we start dating?? All because I wanna “cherish our friendship”? Tf is that shit?

Why why why, what in my psyche makes me do this shit?

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Being in love FUCKING SUCKS, this shit is awful. Idk why anyone would want to feel this way.

Fuck opening up

Fuck being vulnerable

Fuck being dependent

I hate it I wish I was aromatic

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I am who I am and who I am is an anxious ass bitch, so don’t tell me to calm down, or slow my brain, because it just makes me feel bad for the things I cannot change.

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Okay, but does anyone get so utterly filled with panic or a repeating mantra that they just can’t anymore, and they break? Like, something bad happens, something that maybe you didn’t mean to happen, or something you feel guilty about, and all the sudden it’s like all the realization hits you and all the breath is gone and your mind is whirring and all you can think is

I have to punish myself for being so stupid

I can’t let myself get away with this

I have to hurt myself

I deserve it

It’s just one more time

This time it’s for a good reason

Hurt yourself

Hurt yourself

Hurt yourself

And then you’re like frantic. You have to do what your mind is telling you because what you did was wrong. And you’re searching and searching and you’re not even crying or anything like that you’re just... you’re just panicked and you have to do that one thing, and you have to do it because you’re a bad person, but also because you need to shut the voice up.

You have to get it to turn off.

Does anyone else experience moments like this? Because I have before, they’re far between, but there they are. Late at night.

[we-should-open-up]

[we-should-open-up]

When I was 18 I took a ballet class at college and every morning our beginner adult class started just as the Ballet Majors in the studio next door took a mid-class break.

Many mornings they would gather in the doorway of my classroom and watch us struggle through our bar warmups or jumble up a new technique while they smiled and whispered to each other.

And every morning I dreaded seeing them there because I knew they were making fun of me.

I had other classes with some of them, and I was always embarrassed when ballet came up, and it always did, them being ballet majors, because I loved to talk about it but knew they’d seen me dance, and I was sure they thought I didn’t belong in the conversation.

At the end of the semester, our instructor announced that she’d like to invite the dancers from the next door studio to sit in on our final performance as an audience, and everyone in my class hesitated. We’d worked so hard, we wanted to celebrate our progress during our final without being judged. Most of us left class that day suddenly more anxious about the final than we’d ever been.

The next morning, in one of my other classes I had with the ballet majors, one of them approached me, and as if she’d been reading our minds the entire semester, she said

“Hey. I just wanted to say that I know we watch you guys dance a lot, and I wanted to make sure you know we’re never laughing at you. When we watch you guys learn the basics…..it reminds us of when we first started when we were younger. It’s like…looking at ourselves when we first fell in love with dancing. That’s why we love watching you guys.”

It shocked me. I felt awash with relief and utterly stupid all at once.

Here I had spent an entire semester assuming the worst of people who had otherwise been nothing but nice to me in every other setting, and I had no one to blame for that but my own insecurities that I’d allowed to rule me for months.

I’d been so unfair to these girls, because I was self conscious. I was so worried about being judged that I’d judged all of them.

Here I was worried they were laughing at me, and all along they were looking at me with nothing but absolute delight, even envy for what I was getting to experience.

This encounter changed my entire attitude, permanently.

It made me realize that, yeah sometimes people are jerks for no reason, but more often than not, people really are just….Good.

Since that day, I’ve started giving everyone the benefit of the doubt until they prove me wrong, for their sake and for my own.

And I’ve learned that the world becomes a lot better and life becomes a lot easier when you accept that maybe not everyone is judging you. Maybe you’re the one who’s hardest on yourself.

Let yourself be. Let yourself exist and breathe and be happy.

The world is a much better place.

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my heart says yes but my anxiety says no

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You know you’re fucking alone when you’re lying in bed listening to sad music and need someone to admit to just how much you want to end it all - and realize there’s no one.

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Wait, they don’t love you like I love you

Wait, they don’t love you like I love you

[we-should-open-up]

When you told me

“I give you my heart”

When you told me

“I won’t hurt you”

When you said

“I love you”

When you said

“I pinky swear”

When you said

“I need you”

When you said

“Everything’s fine”

When you said

“You can open up to me, I won’t judge”

I should’ve told you

I should’ve told you that you shouldn’t promise me anything.

Because sometimes they get broken

And it’s not your fault, not always

And it’s not my fault, not always

But the words, in the moment, meant something. And now they don’t. Now they’re wiped away by another promise to another person, or maybe a promise to yourself.

I should’ve told you

“Don’t promise me anything. Just try.”

[we-should-open-up]

“We should open up, before it’s all too much.”

—Harry Styles, Sign of the Times

[we-should-open-up]

Like, to elaborate, my friends are always opening up to me about things they go through. Not just little things that piss them up, but real hurtful things that constantly hurt them and that they need help getting through.

They open up about their dark thoughts, intrusive things that maybe they don’t mean to think, but do and it scares even themselves. About self-harm issues, about depression, suicidal thoughts, everything. And that’s not a problem with me, I don’t mind, I want them to come to me with that. And when they do, I listen, and I try to understand.

But maybe the problem doesn’t lay with me listening and me understanding, it’s me never relating my problems to them.

They come to me, but I never come to them. Because I’m afraid of people, my friends, my family, seeing me. The real me. Raw and vulnerable and bare for people to think and judge and misunderstand and twist.

I don’t come to them when I’m sad, or sometimes when I feel like I want to die and the world is swallowing me into the cracks and I’m falling and I don’t exist and all these things.

Instead, I stay silent.

I think the problem is that they give their all to me, as much as they can, but I don’t do the same for them. And maybe that’s what they realize, in the end.

They realize that they don’t really know my innermost thoughts. Sure, they know me, and sure, they know me well. They know my favorite songs, that I suffer from depression, and I get sad sometimes. Cookie cutter versions of parts of myself that I make shiny and pretty before actually speaking.

But they don’t know me like I know them and that hurts them, I think. To think someone has that kind of power over you, but you don’t over them. Maybe I need to start opening up.

Because when they come to me with their darkness and vulnerabilities, sure I may look at them differently, maybe more understanding of why they do or don’t do some things, but never do I look at them SO differently that they become a different person in my mind, or worse in any kind of way.

Maybe I need to just learn to trust. Trust. Trust.

—please let me have the courage to open up.

Maybe the problem with myself is that I don’t give enough of myself to people.

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Maybe the problem with myself is that I don’t give enough of myself to people.

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He wore courage on his shoulders like a prince going into battle, like a cape of heroic impossibility and inhumane capability.

He wore goodness on his head like a crown that would never fall, even when he bowed his head, to cry at the injustices of the world as though he felt everything they did, and he understood.

He wore sunshine in his smile, intertwined between his teeth, glimmering in the small dimple in his cheek and the small lines at the edges of his mouth, where I sat teetering off the edge.

Crooked more to one side then the other, crooked and leaking with mischief as silliness and jokes that never seemed to stray far from the velvet of his voice or the laughter that rumbled up from his chest like drums of music. Like I was in a cathedral, and he was an artist playing his songs and acting their heart out.

He wore sadness in his chest, like a chain had been tied around his heart, so tight it suffocated, where a heavy weight would painfully jerk back and forth cracking his bones into dust, and yet he never faultered. At least not in front of me.

He had thoughts in his head that stayed like a storm loud that would never leave, like months of nighttime in Alaska. Thoughts that leaked and ebbed and flowed into a large lake that remained stagnant, until it bubbled and festered and tears leaked through his eyes.

Sometimes I think

The best people

Are the saddest

And sometimes

They don’t want you to know

Because they’re thought of

As the funny one

The happy one

And they don’t know how to frown

One day when you ask

“How are you”

They don’t know how to say

“I’m not okay today”

“I haven’t been okay for a long time”

“Help me”.

He wore these things inside of himself and kept them armored it, glued the broken pieces together with sunshine smiles and sing-song laughter, like beautiful jewels to hide the dirt beneith, until one day, one day he couldn’t keep it in anymore.

—for a story I’m writing