Avoidance is Key
Conscious or Unconscious

Something that has come easy to me is avoiding people. Although I tend to be a very loud person when I’m extremely nervous or just the tenth level of hyper, I keep many things to myself. Even to my best friend I tend to keep things to myself until I can’t handle it anymore. It’s not a decision I made: to close the door to “facing my problems”; I made it unconsciously.

There is many times when I have sat down and thought about why I close up in a ball and pretend whatever happened, didn’t. Avoiding though, came later when my friends confronted me about whatever had been the “drama of the week”. After that, I found that I couldn’t just go around them pretending everything was ehh okay, I had to avoid them. Walking around corners, tuning my ears, putting my sensors on full blast is only a couple of the many things I had to do to be able to fine tune this ability of avoidance. This was not a conscious choice, somewhere in me I knew I wasn’t strong enough to find out who my true friends where.

Avoidance is now my defense mechanism. Though it may not be number one of many doctors list, it is working for me. Though theoretically, the outcomes may have been better if I would have stuck up for what I believe; they would not have worked for me. First, to be able to handle stuff I have to have a while to fully prepare myself for the battle coming up. Getting in somebody’s personal space, red in face, thinking of the worst names to call them, and steam coming out of your ears was never my thing. Second, I have never had the heart to be able to say what is on my mind. The creeping crawling thing called fear haunts me whenever even the thought of defending myself comes up to bat. Even getting the uniform on, knowing that a long couple of days are coming fills me with dread.

Avoidance may not be the best tool to deal with life’s problem but it is the one defense mechanism that doesn’t make me strive to be something that I’m not. It was unconscious choice that I made to be able to deal with problems that were too uncomfortable. In my conscious mind, I definitely wish that I would have enough guts to pull myself to together, stand up straight and tell you like it is. Maybe someday that will happen but for now, I’m sticking with what I have.

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I wrote this for english class a while ago. Hope you enjoy! :)