I have scars all down my left arm, and they are like roads on a map; they outline my life and they each have a story and a history. I won’t say I remember why each cut is there, but I won’t hide them and pretend I never did it. 

I used to find so much relief in it, so much control. I guess my problems and my troubles where minuscule on the grand scale of things; but at the time they were important to a teenage girl going through a turbulent and hard time in her life. I was trying to fit in and trying to define and understand who I was.

I recently started dating someone, a girl who I really do care for a lot. She also has scars and a history that led her to resort to cutting herself and self harming. I touched a few of her scars and she said she ‘felt something’ when I did it - and I guess in that way we are similar. I feel it, somewhere in my heart, when someone cares to trace a finger over the scars of my past and the untold stories of a broken teenage heart. 

Neither Sana, or I try and hide our marks - from each other, or from the world. That is not something that we are ashamed of - we have a history and that history includes self harm. In the same way that some people’s history includes a parents divorce, or an eating disorder. I care for Sana for who she is and that includes the scars that litter her arms, and the scars that are hidden inside of her. 

Starting to date/see/be with someone is hard. Its difficult when you’re as guarded as I am. I don’t like trusting people and I automatically don’t, until I feel comfortable and safe with them. That isn’t something I will blame on my history, or on one particular person - I put that entirely on myself and my own inability to open up and want to share everything with someone.

Its not because I feel insignificant or I feel scared, its because I don’t want the sympathy or the note of ‘I can’t leave Georgia, she’s too delicate.’ I’ve never been one to drop my defences; I know a lot of girls who turn to promiscuity because of their issues - so similar to mine, but they also drop their guard when they do that.

Though i’m not denying that i’ve had self-destructive moments and slept with a few people I shouldn’t have, I never let my guard down. Not even when we undressed. Dating Sana is difficult because i’m having to learn how to take baby steps.

Baby steps are new to me. I’ve always been incredibly dominant, even in relationships. I like being wanted and needed, but dislike wanting or needing someone. I’ve had lots of relationships - short, long, distance, you name it. But I’ve never needed the person i’ve been with. I’ve never relied on them and when the break up happens, i’ve pretty much always instigated it - or at least, wanted it. 

This is different, this is “lay your heart on the table, bare your soul and we are equal.” And I don’t like it and part of me still doesn’t want it. I’m not going to lie and say i’m this changed person and that I’ve not got issues and that she’s making me a better person - because that isn’t happening.

It might have stopped me sleeping around, but it hasn’t stopped me having all the same thoughts that I used to, and it hasn’t stopped me wanting to run away, from her, from the situation and from the very idea that someone wants to really know me. 

So, what happens to us? Why do we become so guarded? So protective of ourselves, of our hearts, that we stop letting people in? Every single person who I allow into my life on a deeper level, I don’t entirely trust - because my big issue is a trust issue. That doesn’t make me a bitch, it just makes me like every other girl who has been walked out of time after time.

I guess I worry that as soon as I let someone in, they are going to walk out and hurt me. So it is better to be friends with someone but always remain separate, to keep my heart my own and to keep at least a few walls and barriers up.

But even as I type that, I contradict the advice I give to all my friends ‘Barriers do not keep people out, they keep us in.’

This is one of those posts where I forgot I was still typing and not just thinking out loud, so sorry for the length and the incoherent thoughts I tend to have.