You're the type of girl who people look up to because you seem to have it all figured out—down to the tiniest of details. You know what you want and you're driven to get it. What comes to mind when people first meet you? A girl who's strong and independent, one who doesn't have any problem whatsoever doing things on her own and being on her own. You're the busiest bee, the woman who's on top of her game, the girl no one would see shed a tear because she has her hands full with tiny hints of smiles for everyone else—all fleeting, not even allowing it to last a minute. You're always attending to something, always moving on to something, always on the go. You can never be held back, not for a moment, that's your life's mantra.
See, initial interactions, meet-ups with agendas, and scheduled conversations are means of survival for you, a necessity of sorts to get by. But it is when the preliminary introductions and small talk are over, when it's time for the getting to know part, when someone takes an interest in you—be it a potential friend or something else—that you back off and your walls automatically draw up. Without warning, they rise up, up, up until no one can reach them. They're too strong to break through. No one can go around it, under it, over it, or through it. No one has figured out how yet. People knock on your walls, practically begging for you to let them in, to maybe make way for them, to tear down even just a small chunk of it, but you refuse. You won't let anyone come close to your kingdom and its fortresses that you built. A kingdom where you reign as queen and everything else in between—only you and no one else. You're like the charismatic but guarded girl in popular rom-com movies. Only this time, when she meets the doe-eyed guy, neither his suave, sweet words nor his to-die-for attempts to sweep her off her feet will get you. No happily ever afters.
See, you weren't always this way. Once upon a time, you were carefree. You loved, you cared, you thought, you trusted, you believed, you invested, probably more than the average person would. You had so much of it to give and you didn't mind. But then what you freely gave, someone took for granted. Someone deemed unworthy of their precious time. Someone made you the joke with every bit of your being as the punch line. The promises you downright put your faith on? Guess what? They never happened. What you held on to be true for so long had been a lie all along. You gave all only to lose all, to be made to look like a fool while hurting. Deep down, you believed you deserved a sliver of something good. Instead, all you were left with was nothing. Your faith was shattered to pieces, your self-worth shrunk into a speck. And that's where it all began.
You vowed never to love, to care, to think, to trust, to believe, or to invest. In its place were blank spaces, you vowed to never feel again. And then your walls built itself around you; slowly but surely, it grew. Over time, you have successfully rebuilt your life to be your safety net, to be entirely yours. It is, after all, what you'll always have and it won't hurt you. You have absolutely no room left for other people. You left the emotion part out of the equation. Who needs it anyway, right?
But you have to see that we humans aren't wired that way. To be human means having all these feelings and emotions. Being alive is beautiful because of human connections that go beyond surface level and run deep. Living means downright faith; it means taking risks, and it means the capacity to feel pain. Living is putting everything up in the air and raising the stakes only to lose it all in the end. You have to understand how important it still is to let people into your life. You have to understand a life is not a life lived without meaningful relationships and I'm not just talking about the romantic kind. Life is too beautiful to be lived on your lone self. It's true, there are people out there who will still hurt you but there will also be people that will love you fully and without judgment—they're the ones for keeps. But first, you have to give them a chance to break your walls brick by brick. It will take time but when you finally do, it will be worth it. Promise.
Got a story to share? Send them to us at candymagazine @gmail.com and you just might see your work published here!
From The Candy Bulletin Community
