Working on it

Sometimes it takes every ounce of my courage to just talk to people. My default position is one of head in the sand and tail tucked between my legs. I am constantly in awe of people that are always out there, pushing their way into conversations and places.
I mean, it almost never occurs to me that I'm wanted.
So the problem becomes that I withdrawal and assume that I'm not wanted in whatever situation and then that assumption becomes fact.

I don't get a reality check that I'm just being crazy and irrational, I don't get reassurances that it's just not true.
Yet I struggle with thinking I shouldn't need those, that I should just suck it up and get over it. Because how annoying is the needy girl that needs constant reassurance that she's liked and wanted?
But you know, I'm also realizing that as more and more people are stepping out and reassuring me and encouraging me that I don't believe them anyway. For no reason that actually has to do with them I just don't believe them.
I hold my breath; waiting for the other shoe to drop.
I slink back into the shadows longing for invisibility so the words I fear will shred me again might miss me this time around.
I push away, I jump off the end that is deep, I dodge and deflect, I eat and eat and eat and eat.
Because I don't believe that you love me and that you want me around. I just don't. It's not your fault, the fault is mine. Most days I'm treading water believing you. But there are a lot of days that I'm just drowning in the belief that I am merely tolerable to you.

What makes me the sickest, what cuts me the deepest is the lies I believe. I don't believe the sweet earnest truth from the mouths of people that constantly show me they care. I still believe the dead and gone lies, the dusty daggers flung carelessly and the slithering hiss of the oldest lie in the book.
I don't want to believe them anymore. I want them to be banished for good.
I'm working on it.