Small Reminders

It started out innocently, I swear.

All I did was flip through an album in which I was tagged.

And there you were.

Over and over again, in a t-shirt I've never seen before which of course makes me obsess about when you were there last and I checked the date but it's only the date the photo was added not the date it was taken and my heart beats so hard and I want to cry.

Because the panic I feel when I am confronted with your face has still not gone away. I keep thinking I'm over it and then boom I'm NOT.

I really want to be, but still: thinking of our friendship and how I don't have it anymore and how you seem to be totally fine with it kills me. It stands on my lungs and presses the air I've built there back out where I can't reach it. It pulls my hair until my scalp itches and there's pressure under the skin because my brow is knitted and I'm uncomfortable.

Because we were happy for a bit there and THOSE are the parts I remember now and though I vaguely recall the catalyst for the end it's only that: VAGUE. And I don't have anyone that has taken your place. And I don't have anyone that even comes close. And since you've set the bar where it still sits I don't know that anyone is capable of getting up there, and I haven't let anyone get close enough to try.

A piece of me broke off when I told you we couldn't be friends anymore. And then that piece got lost in the move. And I jangled around and now everything's a mess in there and I can't remember exactly what the piece looked like so I can't even get myself another one. I just want to throw the whole thing out and say, "Meh; it wasn't that great anyway."

It just hurts and I really want it not to.

Set Up/Take Down

I am having such anxiety.

He likes me more than I like him.

Aaah, nervesnervesnerves.

Please run away from me. Please save me the trouble.

Lockdown

So there once was this time when I fell completely in love with my best friend and stayed that way for 3 years. Then I told him and everything fell very quickly (6 months) and painfully apart. And it hurt and I cried and it added to the pile of reasons I have limitless barriers between everyone I know and the actual me.

I never provide anyone with anything with which they may hurt me, including my heart.

I am, in short, terrified of intimacy. The thought of having sex terrifies me. I haven't done it in so long (7 years) that I'm afraid/pretty sure I'm going to be bad at it. Add to that the whole, "I hate my fat and embarrassing body" thing and I'm completely crippled.

When a guy asks me out (occasionally) and I agree (rarely) and things go well (if at all; I get blown off a LOT), the only thing I can think of is: Oh my god, he's going to want to have sex with me, how do I tell him I don't have sex? EVER?

I say semi-truthfully that I don't want to have casual sex, that I want there to be some emotion behind the act, but if no one is ever allowed to get close enough to me in order to experience any emotion then I'm only holding myself back.

How the hell am I supposed to know whether I actually feel any emotion for someone when I the only "love" I thought I was experiencing was quasi-toxic and ultimately unrequited? Was I really in love with him?

WHAT THE FUCK DO I KNOW ABOUT LOVE?

I worry so much about this that I think I give off a "RUN" vibe and am thus spared the necessity of talking about it to anyone.

The very few people in whom I have confided have only heard half of my story so as not to spread myself too embarrassingly thin, but then there's never a whole answer either and I'm just as bad or worse off than before.

What the fuck am I going to do?