Remember to Wear Protection….

….and I don’t mean what you think I mean. Get your mind out of the gutter (I was hoping your mind was going to go there so that you’d read this).

One of the more interesting things about starting to dissect my own psyche through therapy, years of mental health training, and now taking psychology classes that literally force me to, is finding these little nuggets of information that I have largely overlooked and/or just thought were normal pieces of me. One of those things is my armor. I wear it with pride. It’s the last line of defense if you manage to make it past every brick in the wall of my protective fortress, reinforced with iron and sharp edges of various broken things that is meant to scare you and test you long before you actually make it to me.

I have spent years upon years upon years of my life learning to protect myself from others – even the ones I hold most dear. I’ll be kind and warm and gentle and supportive and loving because that is who I am under all of this, but I have spent a very long time learning how to do that while also holding people at arm’s length. I anticipate others not wanting to make it past everything I throw in the way and it then becomes it’s own self fulfilling prophecy. It’s easy to look at that protection I’ve cultivated as a good thing – it weeds out the fakers from the ones willing to stick around. However; I’m starting to slowly realize that what I’ve actually done is created a stop-gap between myself and my relationships so that the things I’m terrified of happening don’t hurt as much when they inevitably do happen. I expect that the people I care about will someday either realize that I’m not worth the trouble and/or they will find the things that truly make them happy and move on. I’ve gotten myself to the point in this expectation that when I look forward into my future…I don’t see much. I see the way I want my life to be minus the people I want in it. It’s the biggest of my defense mechanisms: if you wanted to be in my future, you’d have to actually tell me that you want me to think that way otherwise I will assume I’m invading your life and, while I may want you there, I will always – 100% – defer to your happiness rather than my own. Always. It doesn’t register to me (unless explicitly told so) that someone else may want me in different aspects of their life. It doesn’t register to me that anybody would want me around. It doesn’t register to me that I’m wanted.

It doesn’t register to me unless told that I am wanted. That’s a hard pill for others to swallow. That’s a hard pill for me to swallow. It’s a hard realization to have…that I’ve basically spent my life protecting myself from feeling the love and comfort or need of others because I’m too scared of getting used to it and wanting those things before they inevitably are gone. It’s why I have a hard time being affectionate unless given permission to be fully affectionate. It’s why it seems like my desire to have others in my life is an afterthought. It’s why I’m always pleasantly surprised and drawn in when I’m basically told what I mean to someone because my brain is constantly telling me that I’m invisible and that that’s the best way to be.

Being seen means being hurt.

The problem, of course, is that none of that is true and the armor I wear and hold so tightly to my chest is really just fear of losing more pieces. It’s being violently protective of who I am purely because I don’t know that the world wants it…and maybe that doesn’t matter. Maybe it doesn’t matter anymore. What scares me more than anything is the idea of getting to 10 years from now and being alone because I couldn’t let myself let go and stop being afraid. I don’t want these defense measures anymore. I don’t want these walls anymore. I don’t want people to feel like they are fighting through lines of broken glass to get to me….and pushing people away because of my own terror has to stop…otherwise….what’s the point?

What’s the point of always wearing protection?