I would rather you...

If you look closely, you see something you would have missed, had you just glanced at it. If you mull something over and examine your thoughts too closely, you will end up making yourself paranoid, scared and damaged.

I know.

I do it all the time. I prepare for something by imagining the possible outcomes. I focus in on the negative outcomes. The one where you say x instead of y. Where I fall over while climbing out of the car. Where you laugh at me.

I bet you do it too.

I've been trying not too. I have. I'm trying to focus on the now. On this moment, the one I'm in. The only one I can control or at least be sure I can experience. My hands on the keyboard are more real than what I'm making for dinner or what you may say to me tomorrow.

As I try to focus on now, I feel the panic rising. Foreboding. By not thinking through the future, I may not know what to do. I may not know how to cope, how to put my best foot forward. How not to burst into tears or fits of giggles. How to not embarrass myself in front of you. You probably wouldn't care. You don't know I do it. Nor should you. But I do. And I am suffering for it.

Talking it through with myself has been my way of processing things, when I haven't felt able to process it out loud with someone else. Now I have realised that it poisons me. It hides the truth under a layer of self reproach and doubt.

This is the time for me to focus on not thinking it through on my own. To not play devil's advocate with myself. I process through words and verbalising who I am and how I feel.

I would rather you leave because I talk too much, than because I hid my true self from you. Whoever you are...