Walk a Mile

I'd like you to put yourself in my shoes a second. I need a moment out of them.

You're the odd duck - irrevocably so; it's been that way since you were five and it's not changing any time soon. Uptight. Obsessive. Buzzkill. Clingy. Sanctimonious. These and their synonyms are your constant monikers. Well, maybe not constant - occasionally people get creative ("Hitler reincarnated" is one of my personal favorites), and the thousand different faces you've tried to dawn your whole life to cover it up have sometimes held things at bay. Some longer than others. But eventually all the masks (shields) will crumble and these chains will be shackled to you once again.

You cannot walk into a room and blend in. I mean, it's utterly impossible. There will be nowhere you fit seamlessly, no one with whom you can strike up a pleasant meaningless conversation and simply fade away after the day is done. If it's not your awkward posture, your weird physical tics, or your inability to speak out loud without thinking too long, then it'll be your resting bitch face or your improperly perceived aura of arrogance that drives people away.

There will be a miraculous few with whom you honestly click. The few who don't mind your weirdness, don't mind your tendency to want to talk all the time, the few who actually finally get to see your real face. 

They won't stay. You won't know why. You'll get to the point where you let your guard down and they will get to see more of you than the rest of the world sees - in precious cases, more than anyone else has ever seen - and something about that real you will push them away, or push them into secretly hating you and hiding it. Most of them won't tell you what it is (and I do mean most), even if you demand it. More than likely you won't demand the reason, though, because there's an endless string of options that you've been trying your best and failing to fix for more than a decade. And so, whether it's a slow, gentle drift away or a hard, clean break, they will be gone. 

The drifting hurts more than the clean breaks, if you're honest, because, God, you're one to wonder. You are the master of What Could've Been. Because of this, you never give up, you stupid little thing. You promise yourself that you will, that this one was the last time, that one hurt the most and no, you don't want it anymore. But someone will change your mind. And you'll go through it all over again. You're a car racing towards an endless parade of brick walls. And yet, no matter how bashed up and broken you seem to get, you limp your way as fast as you can towards the next one. How long until you're so crumpled you can't even move anymore? Can you even make yourself care?

Probably not.