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I think about if I hadn't been so scared of growing and becoming the person I was meant to be that I tried to drag everyone else down with me, hadn't hated them for being themselves. Hadn't fought with them, and made enemies where I could have had community and solidarity. I know that I hurt them, and all just because I saw something in them that I was afraid to see in myself. I was so afraid of being happy and different that I decided to be alone and miserable.

I know that most of them have probably forgotten about me now, and that some of them have forgiven me. Sometimes, I still think about the time I got coffee with one girl, when I had just figured it out and started hormones. She was gorgeous, way ahead of me, and she knew what she wanted from life. She seemed to have light behind her eyes for the first time since I met her. More than just apologizing, I should have told her that I hope her life is calm, peaceful, and full of love. She deserves the world, and she's incredible.

I spend a lot of time trying to be a kinder, gentler, more considered person. It doesn't come naturally to me. Allowing myself softness, and vulnerability, is anathema to my instincts. I worry that every second of care I extend is a subconscious farce. I worry that, some day, the people who love me will look at me and finally see that I'm just layers of fake-nice bundled on top of a cold, harsh core. My girlfriend tells me that the 'nice' isn't fake, and that my heart is warm and gentle. Maybe I changed. Maybe she just didn't know me back then.

People extend me more compassion than I could ever believe I deserve. In moments of weakness, I can be casually cruel in a way that I hate, and which makes me hate myself. I still hurt people, even if it isn't on purpose. Unfailingly, the people around me give me grace and handle me with patience and love. Second and third and tenth chances I haven't earned, but they say they'll keep giving me.

Seeing girls who are prettier than me, more accomplished, funnier, smarter, triggers some kind of Mean Girl vindication reflex in a part of me that I don't particularly like. Petty jealousy, totally unfounded. Recently, I was being bullheaded and rude about a girl that my brain arbitrarily decided is my enemy. Lashing out at myself and nobody in particular just because she exists. She's never been anything but kind to me and my loved ones, but some part of my mind, trauma maybe, assessed her as a threat.

Someone I know who, by all rights, could burn my life down if they wanted to (nobody would blame them), saw me spiralling and sat me down to talk me through it. "What's the worst thing she's ever done to you?" Nothing. Nothing at all. "Have you done your therapy exercises? What action can you take to help work through your feelings, strong as they may be?"

They didn't have to do that. My life is a string of people extending kindnesses that I don't know how to repay. It makes me think that maybe being softer, kinder, more gentle, isn't something I can do alone. Maybe it's something I have to learn from other people. Maybe instead of dragging everyone else down, I can let them lift me up.

When I look back on this post, when I think about the year that I've had, and the person I've become, I don't know what to feel. I've succeeded in so much, and come so far, and there's something to be proud of in that. I'm more stable now, most of the time. Free of my abuser, in a real way. I have an actually healthy relationship for the first time in my life, and we had an anniversary a little over a month ago. That's something. I'm waiting to see a specialist for my mental health issues. That's another thing.

I've also failed. Profoundly, in ways which make me hate myself. Every step forward feels like it comes with two steps back. I want to be more than I am, I want to reach out and grasp at the life that I know I want, and that I think I deserve. I want to know people, and be known. I don't want to be so scared of everyone. I try, and I get close. I open myself up. The second I'm close enough to look them in the eyes, I flinch. Things go well, and I get scared, and I pull back. Things go poorly, and I freak out, and I sever. I mismanage my own relationships until I have few left, and I make people insist upon me until they're too exhausted to keep trying. I ruin good things, and destroy beauty, until there's nothing left for me. I yearn for people who are standing just in front of me, an imagined wall of glass between us.

I feel stalled out. I finally opened the door to the life I wanted, and then I looked at the world and shrunk. There's nobody to blame but myself, any more. Nobody else holding me back, but I still feel their hands on me, an insistent iron grip. Am I my trauma? Will I ever really get better, or is this it for me?

I got so used to someone telling I wasn't allowed that I hear their voice echoing even though they've been gone for a long time. It was easier to push forward when there was something pulling me back. For so long, I was defined by defiance, resistance, and opposition. Without that friction, I simply drift. Was I ever headstrong? Did I ever really direct myself, or was I always just fighting for the sake of fighting?