There’s the irony of it.

I’m so obsessively worried about being the woman I want to be - being in the place I want to be, that my obsession will cost me that place. The only way to get there is to just adhere to the path I was on long before I saw that place. But the past has taught me that no good thing can last. That I am only where I am because of an accident or fluke. That as soon as they figure out I am a poser, I will be rejected and abandoned as always before. When really, it’s the pervasive fear of rejection and abandonment from a place I never expected to be that makes me wholly unlikeable and much more likely to be abandoned and rejected.

But the first time I was rejected and abandoned, I wasn’t afraid of it. I had no idea it was coming. I was so blissfully ignorant. So secure and unaware. Now the fear absolutely consumes me. I am sure, at any moment, it will come. I am so determined to avoid it, to prevent it, to at least see it coming, that I set myself up for it and make it almost impossible to avoid.

God help me.