A Convincing Front

She wasn’t dead. She just put up a very convincing front.

Of course, if you had told her that she would have laughed you off, because she doesn’t expend energy on emotions other than anger in a thousand different forms. Anger is a mask for different emotions- regret, sorrow, fear. She would have told you she didn’t experience those. She may have almost fooled herself.

She wasn’t alone. She just put up a very convincing front.

People cared about her, people she hadn’t talked to in years expressed that. The further away from her heart they were, the easier it was to be receptive. Their approval was a band-aid for wounds they could not treat. Those closer to you, those you feared letting down, those who could see your scars, those you feared frightening with them. They would never leave your side, but that’s the most fearful part of all.

She wasn’t unloved. She just put on a very convincing front.

She knew that people loved her. She loved them back. Those closest to her never left her mind. Those that she would give the world to, she wanted to close the curtain on the most. They could not see her, they could not know, and bottling things up was her norm.

She was afraid.

She couldn’t pull a convincing front forever.

Somewhere in her lack of living, she still had expectations for her life. Somewhere in her lack of loneliness, she knew she was isolated. Somewhere in her loved life, she thought that true love was never seeing someone suffer. Somewhere in her fear, she found strength enough to tell herself she was wrong.

She was loved. She was alive. She was vulnerable. She was real. She was going through the gates of hell and was looking for an emergency exit. It was desperate, heated, emotional, ugly, and defenseless, but it was her life.

She was still a person. She just put on a convincing front.

When she talked to her closest friends in the first time in a year, that front fell.

“I thought you forgot about me.”

You haven’t, and you can never prove that, but even with your anxiety, you’re glad she didn’t forget about you.

“Never.”

You used to tell people everything. Now it’s time to start again.