Fortress of Solitude

In religion class last year, Mr. S tried to teach us that no one can go "it alone", that we need others in order to survive. But he's wrong, we really don't need others.

It's true what they say about the fact that the only person you can depend on is yourself, that everyone else will only let you down.

Well, it isn't even always that they necessarily let you down. Sometimes they do. Sometimes you realize that your parents are not superheroes, but just people, and not even the good kind. Sometimes it is there fault, but sometimes it isn't; mostly I blame myself.

I have always been one to hope. Hope is one of the only things that keeps me alive. The infinite possibility of tomorrow. So, naturally, when it comes to people, I hope. I hope that they really are a good person, seeing only the good in them because the thought of yet another disappointment is almost unbearable. I hope that people are truly being genuine, that I'm not just manipulating their actions in my mind to shield myself esteem. And, when it comes to boys, more often then not, I hope that maybe, just maybe, this is the one that might actually like me; that maybe, just maybe, someone might love me someday.

Now I'm not a crazy person. I am not one of those girls who meets a guy and immediately starts naming our kids, because, quite frankly, I find that extremely desperate and creepy. And yet somehow, I feel so hypocritical. I degrade those girls so frequently (one in particular more often than others), mocking them for the selfish ignorance, so clearly compensating for insecurity; yet do I not do the same to some extent? Wishing, and hoping, and making more of a situation that is actually there in order to make me feel better about myself. (And more on this later, but how sad is it that we live in a society that, as women, we are taught that we can not truly be happy unless we are desirable to men and in a relationship?)

It's just that, after three years, I thought that I meant more to you than just another name on your friends list. But I guess when you said you loved me I let it go to my head. I must be the one with the problem, right? I just foolishly misinterpreted the friendly affections of yet another guy. I thought you were different, but perhaps I was mistaken, or perhaps it is I who am forever unchanged, destined to get my hopes up and watch them shatter into a million pieces over and over again throughout the eons.

I'm beginning to feel like there is something wrong with me. How is it that every single person I let into my heart only ends up hurting me? Is it the whole parent thing? Am I recreating my childhood family situation, being unloved and unwanted, over and over, trying to fix it; is that my destiny, my curse?

Love is out there, it really is. Maybe not for sixteen year olds, but it's out there. So in all the worlds' quantity of love, is their not even a micro gram out there for me?

I don't know whether it's others hurting me, or just me hurting myself, but it's times like this that make want to curl up into a ball in my own little fortress of solitude, never to let others in, never to be hurt again; to build up the walls of my heart, burying it within the sands of time. I don't just want to be a footnote in someone else's happiness, but I suppose that to disperse myself throughout the love of the world, standing as an outsider watching the happiness of others who pass my life by, is better than living in the isolation of this cold Kryptonian shelter, eternally void of love.