...

I think it's quite clear to me at this point that I get overwhelmed. With clarity, comes the ability to mitigate larger harms by learning to pace myself. But weeks, and months of doing things better and with more knowledge cannot erase the harm that I have done to myself and others to protect myself. Self-awareness is my forte, and I am deeply aware that I have adopted bad habits throughout the years to respond to my fear.

Part of masking is a deep need to portray a measure of perfection. I'm pretending I'm just your typical person and ensuring that the mask is flawless takes a tremendous amount of work. But the reality is that at the very edges of my being, it is obvious. And when it's noticed, I become alarmed. I go home and I cry because someone noticed that I'm "weird". I berate myself. At my most extreme, I run away and avoid the person. Because if there's anything I specialize in, it's running away from my problems. When it comes to my interactions with others, I've always leaned toward being pessimistic. When an argument occurs or if I have spent a long time masking and ignoring my needs I simply distance myself from the person. Or if someone becomes angry with me, my first thought is, "I'm a burden, I need to just leave this person alone." Or if even a slight incident occurs that triggers my fear of rejection. I run and run and run. I didn't know why I did this and certainly no one else did. But I hurt a lot of people. I hurt people trying to avoid being hurt. I hurt people by leaving them instead of bravely fixing problems. I hurt them with my selfish need to seek a false sense of safety. I ran away from my family. I've abandoned friends. I let relationships crumble. I don't know how to move forward with this. I don't know how to convey the cold fear that sinks in my chest whenever I mess up and anger people. I don't know how to have a healthy relationship with others, especially knowing that I have so much to atone for.