1. Truth is. I’m afraid. Actually, I’m fucking terrified. So scared of all the possibilities in front of me will pass me by because I don’t have to courage to reach out and grab them.  am an emotional masochist, an analytical over attentive sadist. Passive aggressive at all the wrong times- I’m learning to take what I want. I’ve learned that I deserve it.

2. Truth is, I’m scared that the woman I’m becoming has already left the girl that I was so far behind that these paths I’m walking is in a new woods, in a new town, with trees that don’t whisper secrets of lessons learned and silent stars that I haven’t told my dreams to yet.

3. Truth is I’m lost as hell.

4. Truth is I’m scared to fall in love so I fall in bed with a wide receiver who never meant anything to me just so I don’t have to hold myself to a higher standard. Arrested by illusions of inadequacy, my past still handcuffs me to a past that used to be a distant memory. Hands feel like hands in the dark, but I am not something to be conquered. No notches on bed posts, I know that I am a gift to be given, a prayer held close to the heart- he does not deserve me. So I stay wrapped like a present under the tree, days before Christmas, contingent on a good report card. You failed. Your loss. 

5. Truth is I stay away from good guys so that the sins I’ve run from never catch up to us and become the heavy silence of tension so strong you can stick your tongue out and taste it. I’m sorry I’m ignoring you, it’s not because you deserve it, but because I don’t deserve you. I’m not ready for something real. Greatness scares me. 

6. Truth is I’m trying to find God everywhere- in the trees, in the smiles of strangers, in the silver lining of the clouds on a rainy day. I’m so in love with a King who has never forsaken me no matter how many times I’ve turned my back to him. I don’t know how he puts up with a clumsy sinner like me, but I thank him ever day that he does. 

7. Truth is I’m clumsy not due to a lack of balance, but because I’ve been trying to grow up too fast since I was three, wearing my mothers high heels because I thought that’s what a woman was. I don’t know what a woman is. I hope someday I can find out, but until then I’m faking it until I make it. I don’t wear make up often because I wore a mask for eighteen years and I no longer have a need for pretending to be something that I’m not. 

8. Truth is. I write everything in black ink. I used to hate writing in pen, but I learned that in real life our mistakes can’t be erased like misspelled words and that there’s nothing wrong with living, or loving, in permanent ink. 

9. Truth is I promise to never run if you just mean what you say. No more lies told behind false promises and no more conferences with my friends. I take full responsibility for my actions, I am not afraid. I am here. Ready to take on the world, I am reckless. I am all in.

So, pay attention. I’m standing on your porch screaming out your name and I won’t leave until you come downstairs. You were always good enough.

I dial up my bitterness and allow an almost tangible haze of disdain to slide across my vision. The only thing of substance I can hold onto as of lately. I am angry. And you are nothing.

Anger becomes my insulation. A stark contrast against the vast emptiness that I’ve been trying to fill since that night in your 300. This is Sparta! A bottomless pit in the heart of my despair. Every ignored message a kick in the chest.
Even Leonidas couldn’t save me.

I hold on to my anger. I go searching for it. It is what allows me to sneer instead of swoon. Easier to deal with than the villainous lust or the knowledge that I’m sharing you with half the campus.

Do they rub your back as you fall asleep? Did your fingertips dance across their spine to a verbal orchestra of spoken dreams and hard losses? The climax of the violins in your lips on my shoulder?

A standing ovation for your performance. I never thought I was the only one. No thoughts of being the one, but I expected more from you. No matter how many times you let me down, I gave you another chance like a little with innocent eyes who could never understand why the stove only burned him sometimes. 

You had me, like a noose around your finger. I’m glad I never took my clothes off along with my dignity, crumpled in the corners of a room that smelled of other girls. Glad I never parted my legs like the red sea for a man pretending to be God. 

That’s not my earring, you motherfucker. 

Let me decide when I’m scared.When my hands can go no further my heart beat no faster.  You know how when you’re sitting at the bottom of a roller coaster before the hill and your stomach back flips at the thought of the drop long before you even move from the bottom? That’s what it’s like every time I see you. Like the thought of the ride is too much to bear and how even though of it leaves me quaking in my boots, I can’t get off the ride no matter how hard I try.