To the people who never let people get too close,

I know you, I’m one of you. I know how you tell people just enough for them to consider you friends but not enough to ever let them truly know you. You talk about your home and your family, maybe a little too much about your family, because that’s what you’re okay with talking about or you talk about the one thing you love because it’s a topic you can go on about for hours. That’s the easy stuff that keeps the conversation going and makes a person feel like they know so much about you when in reality they don’t. You talk about things that happen in your everyday life, like the big test you’re stressed about or what happened last weekend but you never go into too much depth about yourself.

Most of your friends couldn’t even tell you your favorite color. It’s not something you do on purpose or something you even notice yourself doing most of the time. It’s something that you’ve become accustomed to doing over the years. It’s second nature to hold back from getting too deep or too close. You also might find it easier to talk about certain parts of your life than others; like it’s easier to talk about the loved one you lost than to explain your relationship with your parents. It could be because it’s hard or too complicated to explain or just because you feel like it’s too personal.

Everyone has a different reason for doing it. Maybe you used to be different but somebody messed it up for you or maybe you’ve just never known how to let people in. It can be scary to let people in because what if they mess up and share something you don’t want them to or they turn out to be someone you don’t want to know you that well. Sometimes it’s because you know that if you let someone in and they leave it’ll be harder than if you don’t and they stay. You can be the most outgoing person in the world and still keep to yourself, I would know.

Your family always jokes around about how you’re too tough and about how nobody will ever be able to break through that huge wall you’ve built up. Sometimes they aren’t joking, though, and it’s more of a concerned telling. You don’t want them to worry so you play it off like it’s no big deal and in reality sometimes it’s not. You don’t have to share everything as long as you share the important things. Whether it’s with your family in the safety of your own home or a friend you talk to in the middle of the night to get things off your mind. Just please don’t hold everything in.

Even if it’s the scariest thing you can do, you need that one person in your life that you can tell things to. Things nobody else knows about you and things nobody else will ever know about you; like the fact that you and your best friend from home share a birthmark or that you don’t like the feeling of your feet being off the ground. It can be terrifying to let someone in and sometimes that person lets you down but risking that is better than letting everything simmer and eventually boil up, I can promise you that.