I am afraid. Afraid of what? I am afraid of life. Interesting. Can you elaborate on that? Ever since I was little, I thought I was afraid of death, always running to my parents when I started freaking out, reassured by their presence. But as I grew older, I grew apart from my parents (as teenagers tend to do), but it was different from normal teenagers. I started spending all of my time alone, sometimes even attempting to draw away from all people, I have even considered taking myself out of this world altogether. Have you ever tried to do this? No. Go on. So, even though I thought about it, I never did it, or tried. But I did start pulling away from everybody. I put up a wall around myself, an impenetrable wall that people have struggled to get over. I kept them out; I worked to keep them out. In short, I was afraid of saying anything, for fear that I might change something in my life. My life was calm and secure, and I liked it. But, as things started to move towards my junior year, I started feeling more and more unsettled, and I had to do something to stop it. So I tried, and only succeeded in hurting myself further. What happened? Or, more specifically, what did you do? Well, I specifically targeted one important person. Who? My best friend. Why him? I’m not really sure, maybe I thought he was affecting my life the most, or he would be the easiest to get rid of. I don’t really know why I chose him. He was just there. Interesting. Go on. So, I ended up trying all of this stuff to get him out, all in the time of about a month. What kind of stuff? Well, I was telling him about how I was feeling hurt and stuff and how I just wanted him to get out of my life. And how did he respond to that? He really didn’t seem to understand what I was talking about the first two times. How many times did this happen? Three. What happened the last time? I messed everything up. How? I was talking to him one night, and he said something about how I am always comparing him to people I don’t like, so I was forced to tell him this big long story about how over the last couple of weeks I have been feeling regret over our friendship and stuff, but that may have just been the holidays. But after a conversation with my friend, I realized that I have just been being ridiculous and that I have just been waiting for some of my male friends to become jerks, set off by the actions of my former friend. What happened with him? I don’t want to talk about it. It happened over two years ago, and all that’s really important is he was a nice guy and now he’s a jerk. Okay. Go on. So after I finished with my whole spiel, he got confused, and he asked me again if I regretted our friendship. And what did you say? No. Then why take the time to tell him all of this? I don’t know. I was trying to tell him that I like him, and that’s why I have been acting so weird. Why didn’t you tell him? Because once he got confused, I devoted all of my time to making sure he wasn’t confused. And once that was settled, I asked him how he felt now that everything was clear, and he said that he needed to sleep on it. And he hasn’t looked at me since. So how does this story relate to the fact that you’re afraid of life? Because. Every morning when I wake up, I tremble because I have to deal with another day of watching him stare at his shoes. It’s another day of doing what I am afraid of most in my life: moving on.