I can’t let you in my head all the time, because I can’t handle being there myself all the time. I need my walls, need my protection, need my space to protect me from me. I can’t stop myself from obsessing over things if I’m living in my head or if someone else is pushing me towards obsessing by wanting me to open up and share all the time.
“Be yourself” he said and as I started to trust him more I showed him my vulnerable side, showed him I could be afraid of things that I had no control over, showed him I sometimes didn’t have the answers, showed him I could cry, showed him I could panic.
“I want to get to know you inside and out” he said. That frightened me a bit. Why this need to get into my head? I’ve never shown all of me to someone else. Survival of the fittest, eat or be eaten, that’s the kind of world I mentally live in. But getting to know each other is a healthy dynamic in a relationship, a basic need for a good relationship. And it’s something that’ll happen over time naturally, so I didn’t worry too much about it.
“You’ve changed” he said, “ you’re more emotional, afraid of being rejected. Since you quit your meds, you’ve been different” and he looked at me as if he didn’t know if he could handle that, didn’t know if he liked me this way. So I pulled back, created distance.
“You don’t communicate with me” he said. “I feel shut out because you don’t let me in”. I didn’t know what to do, I'm really not one to share my feelings all the time. I have a hard enough time dealing with them myself.
“I guess we’re not soulmates” he said and I started to cry on the inside, I loved him, showed him more of me than I’ve shown others, what else could I do? He wanted me to trust him 100% and I couldn’t anymore, because he had hurt me, made me feel insecure and rejected me. Can anyone really trust another person 100%?
“I don’t think we are going to work, I don’t feel like I can give you what you want from me”, I said. And I built walls of logic around my heart to stop him from getting in.
“Trust your heart, not your head” he said, but I couldn’t. My heart was the gift he rejected, being me was what made him feel more insecure about us, how could I trust my heart when I felt not safe anymore? Wouldn’t trusting my heart mean more rough times? More doubts about myself? More insecurity? It had only been a year since I was rock bottom mentally, could I take this risk now?
He couldn’t handle my need for space, to think without having to share, my need to pull back sometimes because things are just overwhelming to me. My need to switch off sometimes, to not think, my need for balance, my need to let go so life doesn’t become too complicated for me to handle. He couldn’t handle the speed in which I go when I’ve made up my mind about something. He couldn’t understand why I need to keep my emotions in check, not have them overwhelm me. The battle agains my depression has been a hard fight, one I made it through with the help of God, my family and friends and honestly.. I am not sure I can battle like this again. So I can't run the risk of going there again, which means I need to keep my emotions in check, the obsessing to a minimum and I need to be busy living my life instead of thinking about living it.
So even though I thought he was the one, even though I thought God had put us together, even though I had felt safe enough with him to be me at one point in time, I had to shield me in order to stay balanced.
I chickened out of this relationship and that saddens me sometimes. But then again.. a relationship shouldn’t make you feel like you’re in a game of playing chicken, should it? That’s what therapy is for ;)
