My dirty little secret.

I've been keeping a secret.

I know I appear to be unscathed from my experience with the serial killer ex and the following 3 1/2 years in jail, but I'm not.

I am broken.

Being isolated from people you love, being warehoused with people you cannot trust, it does something to your psyche. When you can't touch another person, when you can't trust anyone but yourself, when the only person you can depend on is yourself, you begin to believe you don't need anyone else. For anything. Ever.

This is where I'm broken. I find myself struggling to make connections with people on any sort of deeper level. It used to be easy for me to love and trust and..commit, because I never had to do life and survival alone. Now that I have, there's a part of me that stays aloof and disconnected. As much as I want to feel attached to others, that part of me just doesn't work right anymore. I have to work at feeling attached. Hoping one day that, through faking it, I'll finally make it. I'm barely affected by people leaving my life. I'm barely affected by ousting people from my life. I feel cold inside.

There's a conditioning that happens in jail. A beating over the head, repetitiously, to never, ever trust anyone. You can't. Trusting people can get you hurt, used, abused and tossed to the wolves.

You learn to keep everything inside because what you tell others can become a weapon, so, you close yourself off.

It becomes the norm. The more normal it becomes, the less ability you have to make any real attachments because eventually you realize, all you really need is you.

I'm not sure there's any turning back from that.

Jail fucked me up and I don't know if I can ever be fixed. So, I walk around and pretend I'm all attached to folks, but I'm living a lie. I'm not attached. I want to be, but I'm not.

I mourn the loss of that part of me and I wish I knew how to get it back.