"Erin, are you okay?"

I'm not used to people asking me if I'm okay.

Normally, I'm so good at hiding whatever negative feelings I happen to be feeling that sometimes I even forget I felt them in the first place. Of course you can imagine the aftermath of that - sitting alone in my room, feeling sorry for myself, all the while balling my eyes out, curled up into a ball on top of my bed - so it's not very good for me, but I still do it because...well, just because. And people don't notice, and therefore never ask me if I'm "okay."

People - including my therapist (yes, I have joined the masses of LA citizens and decided to pay a complete stranger to solve all my problems for me) - always say it's best to just "let it all out" because "you'll feel so much better" and blah blah blah blah BLAH. Well I hate to break it to you, but that's not exactly how my brain is wired. 

No really, I have years of stuff still buried wayyy deep down in there and I mean, after a while I feel like it just became a part of me - like what if all the sudden I just let it all out for all the world to know? Then who would I be? To me, spilling a secret is like losing a piece of myself, what makes me, me. So when people ask me if I'm "okay," even if the answer is no - like it is most of the time these days - I usually always say yes, so that I don't have to lose a little bit more of myself. Does that make sense?

If you didn't already guess, there's this person in my life right now who keeps asking me if I'm "okay," while simultaneously giving me this look that says like "I know you're lying if you say yes because you always look so sad and/or exhausted and I'm around if you ever want to talk." Well thank you, I'm extremely grateful to you for caring, but I also have this wall built up that takes like 1200 strong men and a nuclear bomb to break through so good luck with that and I'm sure you'll get tired of trying.

Eventually I know they'll stop asking me if I'm "okay." I know this, because it's happened so many times before. People get tired of listening to a lie, especially when they can recognize it. The only thing is, I don't want this person to stop. But the only way to keep them from stopping is to start talking, and I'm not sure I can do that either.

You catch my drift?

~Erin