on disappearing

i'm disappearing.

'tell my love to wreck it all / cut out all the ropes and let me fall' sort of disappearing.

i'll be back in three weeks. i'll be back in a month.. if i'm back at all.

i make no promises.

there's so many reasons, but i'm realizing they all collide in one main reason, one primary heartbreak, which has been building for months, compelling me to this

because i am such a mess, i am such a wreck, still, even after all this time, and i am convinced that my friends would be so much better off without me, and i can no longer handle the stress of my life, and i am hyper sensitive which convinces me that people are withdrawing from me - whether they are or are not - and i feel that it is unfair to burden them with the sorry pathetic mess that i consistently am and have been.

and this may be wrong, but i look around, and what i see in my friends is....normalcy.

people who love and are loved by their family

people who do not fall apart at the touch of a hand

people who can smile and laugh and it doesn't exhaust their entire self to do so

people who do not walk away from a hug without looking back, because their eyes are streaming with tears, because for the first time in years, they felt...safe

people who can love and be loved without running in panic from past traumas translated into present day terrors 

and i have spent so many years frantically grasping at love, dying for the assurance that someone genuinely cared and wouldn't just walk out on me as soon as i let down my guard.

for too many years, that has been the irrational driver of my existence

but now? now that i have friends who do care, friends who i know love me?

now i am convinced that i need to prove myself worthy of that love.

because after all, who constantly and consistently sticks around, if they don't see improvement? .... hint: no one.

maybe God, but that's different. even God insists that we keep moving forward

but when i'm still a mess, it doesn't make sense to me to expect my friends to keep up with that, to be ok with that, to not grow fed up and walk out.

so before they get frustrated with my inability to get better, i'll leave. i'll leave first, and learn how to live without them, to cut out all the ropes and still not fall, so that when they leave, i won't be devastated.

and if i cannot do that, then at least, i will come back whole. i will come back normal. i will come back as beautiful and effortless and confident and clean and deserving of the love that they've given to me.

i will wipe away all the stains and i will make my heart clean, and i can just see God looking down on me like, 'you know this is not the way', so fine God, you do it, but i don't need other people yet, do i?

i can't depend on them, i can't let myself care what they think...i cannot give away my heart to something that could be gone tomorrow, without so much as a backwards glance.

i refuse to let myself depend on them. and i am growing to do just that - depend on them. let myself be swayed by their opinions and concerns, and i can't afford to do that 

i can't afford to know the things they tell me - to know how dysfunctional my family can be, to know that there is not something fundamentally flawed with me, to know that i do not have to prove myself worthy of love because i have always had to. 

i need to sort out the panic attacks, to sort out my life, to sort out becoming better and who i am and what i am and oh God how do i make peace with the things in my past that have destroyed me yet at the same time have made me who i am today?

i also need to learn how to be a woman - to revisit concepts i disregarded a long time ago, like emotional purity and femininity and purity and courtship and submission and my role as a woman in a conflicted world

i need to learn to handle the demons on my own, with nothing but the God of heaven beside me. i need to hide away for a really long time with nothing between me and destruction but God and my own soul. 

i need to give the love and nurture to my family that they deserve, and if they insist on piling more than these small shoulders can hold, then i will carve more shelves, and pray to atlas for the strength to succeed. 

and yes i realize that this is a risk, it's not safe, it will hurt, and i risk losing my identity completely to who my parents wish me to be. 

i realize that my friends could absolutely forget me, stop caring, walk away, in the meantime, and i will be genuinely shocked if anyone actually cares enough to check in or make sure that i'm only disappearing and haven't disappeared. 

and i don't say that because i don't think they care. i know they do. i just also know how life works, and that it's utterly possible that i will come out my self-imposed seclusion to discover that all my friends are no more. and i would sooner think of holding something as ridiculous as their gender against them, than of holding that against them. 

and in all brutal honesty, i don't know for sure if this will work, or if i will accidentally drown myself - even though i am supposed to text someone if i need help, i doubt i truly will. too independently stubborn, i guess. 

i don't honestly know. i don't know that i'm making the right decision, but i have to try. 

it's better than going insane, it's better than continuing on the way we've been.

and the only thing i know for sure is that i must try. 

i have to.