The Girl From Walden Pond

Why am I so stuck?
Why have I worked so hard to still be so stuck?
Why do I still feel so childlike and incapable of being an adult, like I'd never grown up?
I feel incapable of being a good mother.
I feel incapable of feeling happy and free.
Of making my own decisions and living in a spiritually sound way.
I see no way out.
It feels like a farce to think I'm actually an adult and will ever find a way to feel happy and free and to be good at anything.
It's all an illusion I just can't keep up.
Leave me alone all of you who think I can actually be someone who matters.
I am a follower and that's it, a support in the shadow of the great ones, helping from my dark corners from which I creep, only to dart back to my dark, lonely hiding place.
It's all a show.  The cheerfulness, the autonomy, the capability.
I am not worthy and capable.
I must admit the truth before I can be anything.
I am terrified to be alive, responsible for children, and to have a life of my own.
I am a small child.  How could I do that??
Leave me alone and expect nothing of me.
We all know that's what you'll get in the end.
I can't keep up the song and dance anymore.
I have no more to give.
I have no energy to keep this up.
It's not real.
What's real is that I'm tiny and insignificant, incapable and scared to death of all of you.
I don't want a relationship with you because it means I'll have to do this "thing" some more.
Being with you makes me into something I hate.
I don't want to hate me, so please stay away.
It's how I feel in relation to you.
I hate what I become when I try to be with you, when I think perhaps I can make you happy, when I think maybe we can interact in an enjoyable way.
My dreams crash to the floor.
It all shatters and each time this happens, I feel smaller and smaller, less and less capable of having any impact on the world, on you or on me.
Each time I feel more angry, hurt and helpless to affect anything in my world.
Each time I retreat further, darker, smaller.
Further into myself where I can't be seen.
More masks, more veneers, more pretending, hard surfaces to show to the world.
Less expectation of happiness, connection, intimacy, realness.
I BECOME that veneer, that face I show to the world.
I forget that the realness even existed, that I ever had dreams of connection, intimacy and true love, of authenticity and joy.
It hurts too much to remember that.  Way too much.
I think I would die if I had to expose myself one more time and dream again of real intimacy.
She is so small, so hidden, so protected in a rock hard shell, in complete darkness, tucked away where no one will find her.
There is a disconnect between that pure heart that ventured out to seek connection and found none and the shell of a girl that lived my life.
Years ago I had a dream of a stone statue of a girl called "The Girl From Walden Pond".
That was me, the girl that appeared to be a girl, but who you could put your hand through because she wasn't really there.
Pretending won't make it different.
Acting as if I'm real won't make me real.
It's just more of the shell.
It's either her or it's not.
It's the real me or it's the shell.