We need to be strong.

That is what life teaches us, day after day. There's always some difficult lesson to learn and mistake being made. We have to toughen up and protect ourselves.

We have to cope.

Life is a bastard for doing this, because all my time has been spent doing just that - getting tougher and tougher and building a fortress around my heart.

The problem is that life doesn't ever teach you how to be weak.

The problem is that in order to connect to someone else, you have to let down those walls that you've been learning are so important to have up. You have to let go of all those protections and all those fears.

You have to expose yourself in a way that life has been teaching you is all kinds of wrong.

I feel like I'm talking to concrete sometimes, and at the same time I'm looking in the mirror.

He's just as guarded as I am.

Who knew that so many barricades could be protecting something so truly soft? - and when I get the glimpse of it, I feel like if I blink it will be gone.

I can see why he feels the need to protect it so heavily. This whole world wants to take advantage of it. It's only now that he has reason to hope that someone might only want to cherish it.

To believe is too much right now. I can understand that.

I wonder sometimes if he sees the same thing in me. I feel like I never let those walls down. Does he ever see inside? I have the habit of showing nothing unless it happens to seep through, but even then I wonder if he sees it as something tender instead of violent like it seems.

I wonder if he actually understands.

Sometimes I want him to wound me - I want to bleed enough to feel justified in showing him something. I want to show him so many things, but I'm still . . .

Afraid.

So I need a reason to expose more and more to him. What better reason than his constant bruises? Though it seems easier when it leads to physical pains. I don't have to think as hard then, and I don't have to worry. I can simply feel and express.

I really just want to show him everything.

But how can I when being tender is violence to me?

How can I when I still find it so hard to show someone I care for a single gentle touch with emotion behind it rather than feeling manipulated?

How can I when getting past this is still so difficult?

But that's a lesson that life can't teach me. That's just going to take work.

Maybe, little by little, fumble after fumble, we can find some way together.