No longer running from self

For so long I have been running. Running as though through a maze, never able to find the beginning nor the end, because the truth is I too do not know how this all started.

How one is able to bear a bright smile and wear my non-existent feelings on a sleeve. Always smiling, nodding and pretending that everything is okay. Like books on a shelf, I dust the cover, having you read my book by its cover. Yet, if you are to open the pages and read between the lines you will realize I am everything, so many things, but okay is not one of them.

I am more then happy to tell you about how hard working I am, how I believe that ambition is not inborn but worked for. I am more then happy to listen to you and motivate you from the thousand things I have been through. Painting pictures of embedded hard work and drawing images of the life I wish to have, long to be and can't wait to live. Yet, at no point in time am I ever open to letting you know what really goes on inside. That I would rather curl up in a ball and go back to sleep then tell you that I have childhood issues, that I have a void inside that I can't seem to fill or that I run from myself more often than I wish to admit.

I will never tell you of the childhood fears I faced. That never wanting to be alone and running from myself is not something that developed in my teenage years, but something that became apart of me at a tender age. That I as always so afraid of being alone that my mother thought I pretended. She once locked me in a room and I ended up tearing my clothes. It was then that she realized I was truly terrified of being with my own thoughts, that they tormented me with images I never want to have to utter for fear that they may come true. This continued into my teenage years, such that I would bribe my little sister into sleeping in my room, anything other than me being alone. I used to think it had something to do with having my male cousin creep up on me at night, almost raping me. See, when you run from self, you believe it to be anything external, other then internal. You will yourself to believe that there is nothing wrong with you on the inside, but it is all on the outside. Such that when in finally dawns on you that you are flawed, it leaves you wanting to run to the ends of the earth in the hope of never returning again.

I am flawed. I have issues on the inside that I wish I did not need to address. I have a void inside that grew by the years. It is there, plain as black is from white. Vivid, staring and engulfing. It threatens to tear my life apart. Crushing relationships, taking friendships and ruining opportunities. This void can send me back to bed at 10 am, anything then face myself. It will have me text up anyone at 1 am, anything but face myself.

"Knowing better, wanting better, yet never being able to grasp the said better. "

I always wanted to be perfect. Humanly perfect. Do well in school, date my childhood sweetheart till marriage, go to church and just make myself proud. Live a life that is a reflection of what is going on on the outside, as is equally on the inside. Yet, I am anything but..

Today I start this journey of sheer honesty. Today I will teach myself and will myself into being better. Journeying towards the person I not only want to be, but the person I will grow to be. I am broken, but I can be fixed by me.