everything i'm not made me everything i am

i stare at this blinking cursor blankly, in hopes that something will come to me, but instead --

in my head the words are swirling tempestuously, needing freedom for survival. i feel lost inside my head. when i close my eyes, i see the scenes playing repeatedly as if they're from a movie: the black lines in between each clip pulling the reality apart by milliseconds.

the funny thing about life is that they always tell you to trust, to let yourself fall back. the reality is that it takes a strong, honest person to be there to catch you. human instinct automatically tells us to turn our backs on people. our instincts tell us that people, quite often, would do the same to us (even if they wouldn't at all). trusting people is futile and often completely worthless. maybe this is just my cynical heart speaking, but at any rate, telling anyone anything will get you in trouble. you are better off keeping what you think inside; the smarter person will always keep their thoughts in their heads.

my childhood taught me not to trust. my childhood told me to be secretive, to never allow myself to fully trust in someone else, to keep my guard up about almost everything. i am cowardly with an outer surface that says i want to be brave. i trusted in a family who always hid things from me. i trusted in friends who whispered behind my back. as a result, i don't trust as easily in people. i keep the things that are in my head in my head.

there's a part of me that wishes i could be more honest, more open about who i am, about my past, about my life. but how do i know that i can trust anyone? how can i know that i can trust the family that left me hanging?

my solution was lying. to my family, to my friends. i caught myself in the lies, tongue-tied behind the insecurities that i used as a disguise from the reality of my life. i lost control at a point in my life; i still catch myself every once in a while fibbing for absolutely no reason at all. it used to be just a mask. it used to be the tired "i'm fine, really i am" lie that quickly progressed into the "i have to do [so and so] with [so and so]" to hide the reality of what i was really doing. the lies kept going and going and going until i hit a breaking point that i couldn't control. i slowly realized the lies weren't cutting it anymore. i used to be good at lying; now, i'm an open book.

you especially played me for a fool. you made me feel as if i were the bad person in your life when, in reality, you were the one who consistently did the things you blamed me for. i was wrong a good percent of the time, but i admitted it.

the rest of you didn't help, either. lying to me about one of the worst events in my life? hiding things from me that you knew would hurt me -- to "protect" me? you are my family. as family, i know it's hard to accept when things aren't exactly right. but as family, you must understand that i have the capacity to accept the things that are coming my way. hiding them from me until the last second possible, hiding them from me as much as possible; that will never be the way to go about things.

i lost my faith in things when she died. i have yet to regain it back; my path is directionless. my heart is empty.