Feeling: afraid
Listening to: Evan Rachel Wood - If I Fell
Reading/Watching: --

As a little kid, I was afraid of the dark. I would freeze and begin shaking, until adrenaline kicked in and I crawled to find a light switch, or someone came and rescued me.

A bit older, early teens, I feared knives. They held a weird symbolism, a reminder of what I tried to use them for, and how I lacked the courage, hated myself for that, and longed for a moment of wild daring to press hard enough.

I've always had that instinctive stomach-recoil about snakes... they don't paralyze me the way they do some people, but I have that sort of sixth-sense awareness of exactly where that snake is in the room, and if it moves closer, I move away. I just really, really don't want to touch it. At all.

And now, as an adult, I have the most ridiculous fear: abandonment. It's so stupid, because when I think of pivotal people in my life who have left me, it is due to something like old age or cancer, something massive which comes with warnings. But when I think of friends, the ones not of the blood but of the heart, they come and go like seafoam. Sometimes it's their idea, and sometimes it's not, and sometimes it's my fault, and sometimes it's not.

And I will never say it aloud, but it is in my eyes. It's been the tingling heartbeat that brushes my lips and the shaking in my fingers. I am the space between clinging and running, because your indifferent back is more than I can take, and I would rather give up on you before you leave me, so I can pretend it was my idea.

And you won't leave. Not really. You'll just be twenty feet away and still gone. And it's my nightmare.

Ladies, they say the good ones won't make you cry. But it is only a matter of time, really. Stay long enough, and the only difference is that your roots are too entwined to turn your back.

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