Recently, I’ve been having new nightmares..

I keep dreaming that I’m at some sort of dog park. There are a lot of strange people with their dogs, some small, some large. I’m there with my dog, often also with my grandparents who take care of my dog. At first, everything seems ok, I play with the other dogs and talk to the strange people, but every time, I would look around and suddenly, there would be this huge, aggressive-looking dog there (often german shepherds or pitbulls) and I remember feeling such gripping, crippeling fear, that it would hurt my little dog. The second I see the “bad” dog, everything starts going in slow motion, I struggle with breathing, I feel my panic rising. I look around, wondering what to do because it seems like I am the only one that is concerned. I remember breaking down and crying, I remember screaming and praying for my dog’s safety and then, I would see the owner of the “bad” dog release him. If I’m lucky, I wake up before the reaches us. If not, I see blood everywhere, I hear my dog crying in pain, I hear myself scream and trying to save it, but I’m powerless to do anything. And everybody else, including the owner, is just standing there, watching as his dog kills mine. I’m terrified and panicked and I don’t know what to do. I wake up each morning scared and unable to breathe. I don’t want anyone to hurt the ones I love, but I can’t do anything, I’m too weak.

Afraid.

I’m terrified of the world. I sometimes think I’m not good on my own. Then again, I also feel terrible when I’m with someone so either way, I’m unwell. I’m scared of so many things that are unlikely to happen to me. It sounds weird, but I am so terrified above all else of being raped. I don’t know where the fear comes from. Of course, nobody wants to be raped, but I’m actively afraid of it. Whenever I’m outside on my own, I can’t help but look over my shoulder every few steps because I feel like I’m constantly in danger. I lock my door twice each night and stem a huge chair against the door. I feel a little safer like that, but I haven’t felt safe in a very, very long time. I don’t remember what it was like as a child, but these active, crippeling fears of sexual abuse and violence have started since my relationship with my ex turned bad. I’ve been very afraid of robbers and intruders even as a child but it got so bad in the last years. I remember calling my ex boyfriend in tears in the middle of the night when my mother was away. He would give me instructions so I could sleep, but I just couldn’t. After that, he always slept at my place when my mother went out of town. When he was there, I felt a lot safer but I couldn’t help wondering what would happen if somebody came to rob the house when he was there. Would he be able to protect us both or would the robbers hurt him? I couldn’t stand the thought. After we broke up, the fear got so much worse. I dreamt every night for more than a year that strange men would come into our house, kill my mom and dog and then rape me. Ever night. I couldn’t stop dreaming about it and awoke each morning panicked and drenched in sweat. There was a short time when it stopped. I had started a new relationship and spent every night at his home because I was afraid to stay alone at mine. The dreams came back after that relationship started going downhill, too. I don’t feel safe anywhere. I have those nightmares anywhere I go. I feel so anxious and scared every single minute of each day and I just can’t calm down. It’s like having a panic attack but it never ever stops hurting.

I’m so damn lonely right now, it’s ridiculous.

I’m probably going to get fired on monday, I’m still in love with my ex who has new girlfriend he’s happy with and to top it all of, my best friend basically ignores me. I have nobody to talk to and nowhere to turn.

I’m so sad all the time and I don’t know what to do. My internship is turning into a nightmare. Nothing I do is ever good enough. And the thing with my best friend…she doesn’t call or text ever since she moved. She’s been here one weekend and everything was fine, but the second she found friends in that new town, I became irrelevant. This is the third time in 2 years a best friend left me. Maybe it really is me. I’m hard to love, I guess. My ex…god how I still love and miss him. I can hardly stand it. And he’s gone off and in love with somebody new, for 6 months already. They’re happy. And it’s making me miserable. I want to talk to him. I want him. But he’s long gone and I’m holding on to the past. I’m always doing that because I’m scared of the future. That’s weak, I know, but I can’t help it. I don’t know how to move on. I’m miserable, every second of every day. I just want this pain to go away.

Passion Pit.

I don’t hate you. I don’t know what I even feel about you. I’m very sad and often very angry when I think of you. You’re not a good person. You hurt me so much that I still have trouble coping with the pain you inflicted, even though it’s almost been a whole year. I try to avoid and escape you because I don’t know how to handle seeing you. There is a big part of me that still loves you for some reason. Maybe because you’ve been my first “real” boyfriend. Maybe because you were the first and last person that ever made me feel like I belonged. Maybe because we’ve spent 2 years together. Truth is – I still miss you a lot. I still feel your absence in my heart. You leaving is still something my heart can’t comprehend. After all you’ve done, all the pain, all the tears, all the fighting…there’s still a big part of me that would forgive you in a heartbeat if you apologized. When we broke up in February 2012, I was so angry at you for many good reasons. I carried that bitterness around with me like a thick shield that “protected” me from feeling any sort of happiness. I promised myself I would never fall for you again. But then, in December, you apologized. You seemed like you really meant it. All the pain I’ve felt disappeared in a second. I couldn’t help but forgive you right on the spot because you took the pain away that has burdened me for so long. Then, it all fell apart again. You’ve only made the pain worse by piling more on and on. I’m still baffled because I don’t get how you got do that to me. Even if we had many fights, even though I wasn’t always nice, I know that you’ve loved me at some point. How can you hurt somebody you love or once loved like this?

I guess dwelling on it won’t help, but still…I know I shouldn’t want to be with you or even miss you. The thing is that my missing you and having feelings with you doesn’t make a difference. I won’t come back for you and you won’t come back for me, I know that. Being with you now but be every kind of poison imaginable. I had my reasons why I wanted to break up before going to Uni. I didn’t want to be confined to my highschool boyfriend all my life. I loved you but I sometimes wondered if this, our relationship, was all I would ever have. Yes, I was happy most of the time, but we were incompatible in many respects, we fought a lot, you shared little of my beliefs…I don’t know. I guess our realtionship is something that could have only worked in highschool. I couldn’t imagine having you in my life right now. I want to travel, I want to see the world, I want to study and to have a million different experiences. I need to be on my own. If you were here, I wouldn’t want to leave your side. I didn’t want you to be all that life had to offer to me. I want a real big love that will make me both happy and healthy. All you ever did was make me ill and insecure and crazy. I don’t want to feel that way. I want to find a person that will make me feel strong and great. There is no way we could work out. I don’t trust you in the slightest. I would love to have the chance to completly start over but that’s not how it works, is it? How can I forget all the things that have happened between us? I know that good things don’t come easy, but love shouldn’t be this hard. So I’m just going to learn from you. I’m a smarter, more self-posessed and mature person since you left. And depressed. God, I’m so depressed sometimes. But I’m working through the sadness and the bitterness. Because I want to have the chance to be completly, ridiculously happy. And this time, I plan for it to be forever.

Cough syrup.

I feel so lonely sometimes. I know I’m doing the right thing staying away from you and not trying to get into a relationship. I’m not quite ready yet. But I do get lonely sometimes. It might hurt less if there were more people to hang out with at my new home. I’ve been making friends (or at least trying to) at work and soon Uni will start again but …I always go home alone. I work for 10 hours and more and return to my empty appartement to quickly eat something and fall asleep watching Parks & Recreation. I’m not unhappy, that’s not it. I love my job, I have a loving family and good friends. I don’t want to be stuck in the past. I don’t want to be the person I was with 16 forever. I hate that girl. I want to grow up, fall in love, build a life. I know it’s going to happen someday, but I really need a sign that there is somebody out there that would stay. A person that things I’m amazing and never wants to leave my side. I’m lonely. And when I’m lonely, I think about you and how I still miss you in my bed. That hurts. I can still feel your absence clearly, even though it’s been 1,5 years already since we last slept side by side. Since you’ve been mine.

I can’t find serenity.

Another horrible night. I don’t know why my nights have recently turned back into something horrifying. I was finally at a point where I didn’t need any sleeping pills anymore, my back pains were mostly cured by my new matress and I finally slept peacefully again – for the first time since more than a year. And now, it’s returned. Yesterday, I woke up a whole of 5 times from terrifying, everchanging nightmares. Today, I feel so weak, I can hardly stand on my own. What is happening? I know why I feel so uneasy. My mom has been pressuring me into getting back in contact with my dad. I wouldn’t do that, but now, for the first time, he didn’t put money on my credit card for my student loans. He has been very responsible about that and now he’s already four days late. My money is getting pretty scarce and since I won’t get payed for my internship until the middle of November, I’m getting really really worried.

A life without Facebook

You know, I think it’s kind of troubeling how hard it is for me to let go of certain things. Let’s cast my issues with letting people go aside and concentrate right away on the issue that’s acctually at hand: Facebook. In the last 1 1/2 years, Facebook has both been a lot of fun and a lot of heartbreak for me. I liked chatting with my friends, creating groups, uploading statuses and posting my current feelings in songs and pictures. But is that really necessary? I can chat with my friends via whatsapp, I hardly ever do anything in those groups that I couldn’t do without facebook and the need for attention-whoring can easily be satisfied through instagram. Overall, facebook is keeping me down most of the time. People post statuses or pictures having to do with my ex, I get sad when people don’t like my thoughtful statuses and it invited me to stalk people, that only hurt me in the past. At some point, I wished real life was like facebook – that I could block those that I didn’t want to see and hear and actually have real secret groups for only those, that I really liked. But in reality, facebook makes me much more lonesome than I already am, not to mention it’s wasting a lot of my time. I’ve thought about it and I might delete my facebook once I start working. I don’t have all that much time anyway once I do and facebook has become depressing for me. The only thing I am concerned about is whether I will be able to have as much contact with people in general without it. Sure, with my real friends it’s probably not going to be any different (they all have whatsapp anyway) but what about almost strangers? I’ve gotten to know a few people over facebook and joined some groups activities since I’m kind of awkward in real life. Will I miss that? I don’t know. I might do it as an experiment for the time of my internship. Who knows? It might make me happier.

I’ve been thinking a lot about sex recently. Since I’m not having any at the moment (more or less because I don’t want to) I’ve started pondering why I haven’t felt satisfied with any of my partners but one. Thus far, I’ve had relations with four boys/men (depends on how you see it age-wise) and I can’t say I’ve really enjoyed it (most of the time). I hardly ever got truly aroused or felt good when doing it. Honestly, most of the times, I didn’t feel anything and it worries me. The only person I ever enjoyed sex with, was my high school boyfriend, the boy, that I’m still a little in love with today. I guess that’s why he was the only I liked having sex with – I truly and passionately loved him. Our relationship ironically started with me wanting and needing emotional and physical attention. My first relationship had been long-distance and so I had missed a lot during that time. I was very much in love with my first boyfriend, but at 16, it wasn’t enough for me to see him once every two months. I needed more than that. So you could say my second relationship and the only love that lasted thus far was built on superficiality (mind you, my second boyfriend was attractive to me but to barely anyone else). We would get all wrapped up in each other, we spent every waking (and sleeping) moment together. Sitting silently next to him in class was impossible; we held hands below the table and whenever the teacher would look away, we would kiss quickly. My old classmates still remember us making out in the court yard every recess. Usually, I wasn’t the kind of girl who would do that. I didn’t like the extreme display of love in public and I disliked lovey-dovey couples. But with him, I just couldn’t hold back. I was constantly drawn to him, to his voice, his hands, his look. Every little thing he said got me railed up, it was next to impossible for me to contain myself when I was around him. I don’t know exactly what it was about him that made me this way. He had some sort of power over me that I can’t explain. Being with him meant complete happiness. I guess if we had had kind of a “friends with benefits” relationship, being with him wouldn’t have felt this good. I think my enjoyment mostly arised from the fact that I loved him so dearly. Maybe that is the problem. Since him, I have hardly been interested in men in general. I’ve been on dates with 6 guys since we split up and have had two sexual partners, but I can’t say that those guys have come even near to the feelings I’ve had for my ex. If I could find somebody to truly love, I might get a chance at having that feeling once again, but I seem to have problems moving on. I’ve had dates, I’ve had one recent relationship and I’ve convinced myself that my ex and I won’t ever get back together. That alone has been a huge achievement for me since we’ve been apart so long and I still held onto him tightly, but right now, I might be stuck in kind of a rut. I want to have those feelings again. The man I dated after my ex was ok, but he couldn’t bring out even the least bit of passion in me. When we had sex, I wondered when it will be finally over most of the time. Falling in love and getting back on your feet takes a lot of time and I don’t want to rush into anything but the absence of true passion and love is really starting to bum me out. I’m 20, isn’t this kind of the time where I should fall head over heels in love with every man I meet and have both great and horrible experiences? I can’t even do that because I’m far too sensible. I just wish I could let go and enjoy love instead of thinking of it as kind of a chore. I don’t know. It’s complicated.

Did she make your heart beat faster than I could? Did she give you all you’ve hoped for?

I’m not going to lie and say that I’m ok with everything. Because I’m not. I’m still jealous that she gets to be with you when I can’t. I’m heartbroken that you’ve gotten over me. I’m angry that you get to have a girl that loves you in your life while I can’t maintain a relationship because I compare everybody and every feeling to you and the love I used to feel for you. It’s not fair because I have been trying my hardest to move on since our break up and I still get weak everytime you’d come around and dangle the carrot of hope in front of my face. I never wanted to be that kind of girl, that was why I broke up with you in the first place – to not be pathetic enough to drag this relationship out even though we both knew it didn’t work. But in the end, I did that anyway.

At some point, I had crossed this fine line between love and obsession. Somehow, I lost myself in the feeling of needing you to survive. The rest of my life didn’t satisfy me; school was a drag, home life was hell and you were all that was good and right. I clung to you because you were always there for me. When you withdrew, I clung harder. This was around the point we had already drifted apart and I tried so hard to keep you by my side that losing you more and more was more painful than anything I’ve ever experienced. I felt you disappearing before my eyes and I couldn’t do anything. You were just gone at some point even though your body stood next to me, holding my hand. I lost you. Losing you for real, knowing you didn’t care anymore, was and still is the most painful thing I have to deal with. Because no matter what happened, I always loved you. I always cared. I could never bring myself to hate you. I was drawn to you, like a moth to the light. You were my light, everything that gave my life meaning. And when you left, there was only blackness. I needed you to make me feel better but being with you just made me sad and confused…In the end, you kept making me iller than I was from the start. I guess that’s the danger of obsession. You cling desperately to the thing that gives you a good feeling and ignore that it’s actually just making you worse.

After all, you’re just a silhouette.

I met him today, with his girlfriend. I only got a good look at their back side, but I saw them – and it didn’t hurt half as much as I feared. As I looked at him, holding this strange girl’s hand, I got very confused. Was this the boy I was so dearly in love with? I’m not sure. He looked differently. When he spoke, his voice didn’t sound as soft. I quickly flashed back to all the times he held my hand and held me close, but there was no data to be found. Don’t misunderstand me, I still have a lot of memories of him, but this man I saw with another girl wasn’t the boy I used to love. He moved on and so have I, finally. I didn’t feel too bad seeing him. It just reminded me of the fact that the girl I was loved that boy more than anything else in the world; that this boy probably loved that girl as well and as much – but that the man that stands before me now doesn’t.

“And if you’re in love, then you are the lucky one

’cause most of us are bitter over someone.

Setting fire to our insides for fun

To distract our hearts from ever missing them

But I’m forever missing him.”