Please Don't Make Me Cry

I need a friend. This thought has struck me like the cattle part on the front of a train that I ignored right up until the point of impact, even though it was looming in my periphral vision for quite some time. I guess I didn't want to believe that my best friend (let's face it, my only friend come to that these days, or at least the only one who's still in my zip code) would walk away from me over something as simple as a bad night. Or nights. But I guess I should have stepped out of the way BEFORE the train hit me.

You see, when I love someone I choose to love them. There's none of this idiocy of "falling" in love, or "accidently in love" ala Counting Crows. I see, I think, I deliberate and then I feel. You might see it as sad, but I've learned to guard my emotional triggers from just anyone, and for very good reason. Then again, maybe there is no reason good enough. Even when it's just a friend, I choose to care but most dangerous is when I start to believe in them, to rely on them. It's then that it hurts to lose them. It hurt to see my best friend shunned out of Utah for her beliefs. It hurt to leave Racherella to move by myself and live alone. It hurt more than anything when the person I loved decided to take back our future together, and give it to someone else instead. But most of all, it hurts that I have chosen to allow it.

And so again, I find myself unconsciously, but somehow deliberately giving someone else the power to hurt me, the ability to make me cry. In one moment, everything I have built crashes to the ground like a pile of broken plastic; not quite as strong as I had thought. And suddenly I am no longer a strong and confident version of myself, but someone who feels ...not enough. If this is how caring feels, please make it stop. I don't want to care that much for someone else's opinion of me, I don't want to give a person the power to break me. From the inside.

If I hide my trigger, then no one can accidently set it off, and then no one can ever hurt me.
This way, you'll never make me cry.