I’ll never let you in.
I’ll give you glimpses, but you’ll never really know more than what’s on the surface.
I’m good at hiding and I’m good at lying.
I lie to myself all the time so it’s easy to lie to you, too. It’s so much easier than telling the truth.
It’s not that I don’t want to let you in.
It’s that letting you in means being honest with myself and sometimes that’s too painful or scary to deal with.
It’s not that I want to lie.
It’s that when I’ve told the truth in the past it was met with silence or judgement.
It’s a terrible feeling to finally muster up the courage to ask for help and be let down.
It’s hard asking for help. It’s harder asking for help when you don’t know what you need.
And so it’s easier to hide.
It’s easier to pretend I am all the help I need. After all, I should be in charge of taking care of myself and giving myself what I need, right? Well, sort of. I’ve come to realize that yes, I should be in charge of taking care of myself, but that doesn’t mean doing it all alone.
Being in charge of myself means…
Recognizing the signs and symptoms that I’m not ok.
Learning and understanding the coping strategies that work for me.
Finding ways to ask for help that don’t feel like I’m actually asking for help.
Asking for help in a way that works for me. For me, asking for help can look like scheduling alone time, ordering take out for dinner, a physically distanced walk with a friend, a break from work, a country road drive with the music turned up loud.
Being in charge of myself means being more proactive in caring for myself in the hopes that one day I won’t need to lie to myself anymore.
Any maybe one day I won’t need to lie to you anymore either.
Firefly Beat 