"...And I was alone."

The other day I was looking through some things that I wrote a couple years ago, and I came across this. I kinda liked it:

"I always have this fear that one day you are going to discover that I'm not as great as you once thought I was. <--this is to be alone.

Once upon a time, I surrounded myself with a wall. Not just any wall… not just wall of sticks or stones. I surrounded myself with a fortress. A mental fortress. Impossible for even the strongest to penetrate. I was determined, so very determined, that I would be the only one allowed inside my fortress. I did not want to be close to other people. Confined within the walls that I had so carefully constructed, I was able to create my own world. I had my own dreams and lived my own destiny. I did not want others to truly know me. Within me resided the fear that one day I would be discovered. But no! I would not let that happen. The truth is; I was afraid. Afraid to let people befriend me, afraid to let them discover who I truly was. I was not perfect. In fact, I was far from it. I raised the expectations for myself to a height where I almost expected myself to achieve perfection – but I was never able to do so. I felt that those around me wanted me to be so perfect that they expected more of me than I was able to give. It was a panicked feeling, the feeling that I was not good enough, that I could never be good enough. I gave myself the appearance of someone who was to be desired, loved. I was, I suppose you could say, popular, adored. But that wasn’t the real me, that was a disguise that I had thrown on top of my real identity because I didn’t want people to know that I wasn’t really as great as they thought I was. But living a lie, while the lie may have looked good, made me an outcast on the inside. I had forbidden myself to grow close to anyone, because I knew that that would mean uncovering who I truly was. I had no one to talk to about my deepest troubles, no one to confide in. I knew that I was a broken person – but I didn’t want others to know. But then, slowly, I began to realize, that to live with the fearful mindset of wanting to be great only because I wanted to keep people from discovering the true me – that mindset is loneliness, solitude. And I was alone. I realized that I’d rather have people see the true, plain, not-all-that-interesting me, rather than be alone. So I tore down the wall. Bit by bit, it all came crashing down around me. If I had previously stood a princess, now I stood a pauper. My life changed drastically. Many rejected me. I had expected this; people did indeed realize that I was not as great as I had once claimed to be. But then there were others who stuck by me. People who truly did understand, people who didn’t care who I was or that I was so imperfect. Those were the people who were real. They were real enough to realize that not everyone is perfect, that everyone makes mistakes. They understood that people hurt, that everyone falls down. And those friends are the people who, when I did fall down, were able to pick me up again."