I just noticed the strangest thing.
I consider myself a relatively open person, sharing my stories and experiences with no second thought. I will always be honest about how I'm feeling, and I will allow you to see me with no shield stopping you. But I also realize that I fight every step of it. I will tell you my trauma, and then hold against you the way you react. I will tell you truthfully what my emotions are, but I won't always tell you why. I will tell you I have difficulty trusting you, but I won't show you the extent of it.
If you enter my life, I guarantee you will hurt me. Not because you mean to, or because I am overly sensitive. In fact, people say many things to me that others would find offensive, and I do not. No, you will hurt me because I want you to. I search for a way, a reason, to prove to myself that you are not trustworthy. I will put you in uncomfortable positions because I want to show myself that you will always end up hurting me.
I do this unconsciously. Until just now, I hadn't even realized it. I have done it before and have been doing it for years, but at this very moment, I did it again. I use at as self defense. For a long time, I would simply push people away from me from the get-go, before they even got to know me. I would horrify them or never let them in, using all my strength to repel them. But old habits die hard. It is true, that the people in my life will hurt me. After all, no one can ever be perfect. But still, I use this mechanism as a way to keep new people out; a way to disguise and validate my fear. I am scared of letting people into my life. What if they hurt me, betray me, or do something even worse? Too many times I have trusted the wrong people, and it brought me little more than pain. I push people away from me early, so they don't do it later. I don't believe many people will stay, and I would much rather have someone walk out of my life at an early point, rather than later, when I am emotionally connected to them. This, I suppose, is why I share my story upfront. I like to tell people from the beginning what kind of an emotional mess I am. I do this not for sympathy or pity, but for a reaction, for a judge of character. If they decide that they cannot handle me (which is completely legitimate), then I do not mind it. After all, better for me to lose someone I hardly know than one of my good friends. This has happened to me as well, and interestingly enough, I find friends often leave for reasons other than this one. In fact, the people that I have told my story to only after befriending, are surprisingly still my friends today. Not all of them, of course, but a higher percentage.
Mum tells me that I should wait to become acquainted with someone before spilling all my secrets on them. While I understand this, to some extent, I also tend to feel like that's dishonest. This is who I am. I am a person dealing with emotional trauma. I suffer from depression, and often experience random and irrational anger. If I hide this from a person, what does that make me?
There is a difference between hiding something, and simply not telling them, but I believe in this case they are similar enough. Hiding my emotional everything would be extremely difficult, especially as it is something I struggle with every day. Even on my good days, there are often times that I would just like to curl into a ball and cry. Moments when I inexplicably feel rage towards every person I've ever known. Why is this happening? I don't know, and I try not to dwell on it for fear of sinking even further into these negative emotions. But I'm afraid. Of myself, of other people, of opening myself and letting people in. I'm scared of letting no one in, and being alone. There doesn't seem to be an easy win for me, and I'm running out of solutions. How do I let people in, without chasing them away?