Shut

While growing up, I felt safe and at peace in putting my thoughts and fears in a journal that, in many cases, was my safety boat in the messy world around me. As a child, reading novels and writing immersed me in a world where everything made sense. For a long time, I felt isolated as no one understood what it meant for me. No one understood why I was doing it, and most people thought it was childish, “are you not too old for these things?” or “you are ridiculous. Who do you think would care about what you write?”.

Useless to say that I kept my thoughts and writing to myself for a long time. The first year of University was terrifying, but I found my peace once I met so many people with the same passions and aspirations, even the same doubts and fears.

I remember in one of the seminars, we talked about the impostor syndrome that most writers once in their lifetime had to face. Even calling myself a writer was a big deal for me. It still is.

I also write in a language that it’s not my own, but a mere acquisition of 10 years living in a

country that I like to call home. I remember that I pushed myself to read in English as soon as I came here. After all, I didn’t want to have to put a stop to my passion because I couldn’t understand the language.

Someone would call my adventure to the UK bravery. I call it being a coward. Because I didn’t come here pushed by the eagerness to work and build my life (that came after), I ran away from problems I created and couldn’t fix them because I didn’t have the strength to fight them. I didn’t have the mindset of a woman that knew her worth. I had the mentality of a child that knew she was worth nothing more than a cheating boyfriend and an abusive relationship.

I think that’s when it all started my “fresh start” mentality. Whenever I switched jobs, whomever I left behind was forgotten, with them a part of myself. I liked to meet new people and present a new me, something that was able to fit inside that environment and thrive. A new persona that maybe was pure fiction quickly became who I was in that part of my life.

Sometimes when I think of all the different personas I have created, I can see a pattern where my “real” me, whomever the hell she is, is trying to resurface, shocking who is next to them, my friends. My friends. Can you call friends who don’t know you? Will they be pleased to know what’s inside me? Would they be shocked or horrified? Would they know that I just showed them the part of me that I knew would make them like me?

You think that years of doing the same wrong things and following the same patterns would teach you to avoid certain situations. Well, it didn’t work for me for a long time. Despite many mistakes, I had to leave behind many people to survive and move on.

But now, I feel completely shut out from my life. How can I go back to relying on someone I became to consider my enemy over the years? How can I return to trusting my broken heart in someone else’s hands when it will mostly crash with no resentment or pity?

Sometimes I feel like that kid that was shutting herself away in a World of magic and inexistent platforms to live another day away from her world.