It feels like it wasn’t too long ago that I was normal. I always thought as a kid that I would grow up to be the popular girl on television, but I never did. Life happened and with it came an array of issues. Mental illness started attacking my life and my families. At some point enough people had left that I began to assume everyone would. I had grown to have abandonment issues and I realized with it I began to see the world differently and with that I began to live differently.

I see the world from the eyes of fear and anxiety that everyone is going to leave, and the more people I meet the worse it gets. At the end of the day I count all the stupid things I said to the people I don’t want to lose and I play movies in my head of all the different reasons and ways those people will surely leave. When I feel the wind on my face I remember the times that the last person who left had felt it with me and convince myself soon I will be alone again. The simple quirks in my personality cause me to freeze in fear and think everyone will leave.

I never tell people how fearful I am that people will leave and I never tell them why my love language of affirmation is so strong. I am weak and fearful, yet I act like nothing can bother me. I try to make friends because when I am alone it eats me alive, but the more people I meet the worse it gets. I assume that I am only being invited to things out of pity and that at any moment I will be left alone in the world, but in this I notice and love the little things in life that others take for granted.

I live differently because when my best friend Jinny grabs my hand and lays on my shoulder I take it in as much as I can. I breathe in the moments that others are just happy in. In my head at any moment the person I am enjoying may disappear out of my life and I need to live through that. When I have met people at college I attach easily and become clingy because I never know when they will leave. When they say they love me I take it very strongly because one day I might not have that anymore.

I live differently because I live in the freedom and wildness of life. I live with the idea that animals and nature are the only things I can count on. I have cats that I hold dear to me and I have the wind and stars to calm me. Girls like me are adventurous and we appreciate all the little things because we realize what the real fear is.

I realize the fear that the longer I cling the more I am secretly shoving away and I don’t mean to because I also live differently in a bad way. When I meet people I want to keep around I become fearful. I shove them away by accident. I become annoying and clingy and even pushy and on purpose. I do it by accident but it’s in my subconscious to do it so that I am no longer afraid. If I control them leaving, then I know that I did it and them leaving was all me I can blame me and not them. I know that it is unhealthy, but I live in a world that I do not want to be angry at the people who do leave because at this point it is mainly because I have to live differently.

Girls with abandonment issues live differently because they do not know who will be here tomorrow. We breathe in the world around us and enjoy the company of everyone. WE secretly fear being alone and fear who we will be by accident. We know that we live differently and all we ask is that you are patient through it all because we are trying we just see the world so much more clearly than all of you. We see it as temporary and unpredictable and even though at times its terrifying we enjoy all the sweet little miracles of friendship even if we accidentally take friends for granted in fear.