Better off as the fool than the owner of that kind of heart.

I may have been the kind of girl who wore her heart on her sleeve at some point in my life, but I can say with a good deal of certainty that I haven't been that type for quite some time. Somewhere along the line playing my cards close to my chest seemed like the logical thing to do, and it's since become dangerously easy to simply never show my cards to anyone at all.

I'm not saying that my guardedness is wise or clever or particularly well thought-out, but everything and everyone is based on such fucking externality anyways that really, what difference does it make? So long as my thighs don't touch and my roots have been touched up and my heavily braceleted wrists are thinner than the girls' sitting next to me, it doesn't. So long as I go out often enough (but not too much) and drink this and know the bar staff there and that club owner here and am always welcome in the booth, it doesn't. So long as there's a vague sense of knowing that I'm smarter than all of this, more than all of this and not trapped by all of this, it doesn't.

Or does it?

The fortress of anonymity that I've built and fiercely protect around Nightgowns & Cigarettes can be somewhat problematic for me; just because they don't know me doesn't stop me from wanting them to at times...but, mind you, not enough for me to confess to anything.

So what will it take for me to stop being so horribly scared? The mention in a recent issue of Eye Weekly certainly didn't do it. As we sat there on our stolen couch, the newspaper print of the thin pages staining our fingers as they flipped through, taking note of the photos of our friends and columns about the bars that we get free drinks in, surveying the events that we'll accept and decline the inevitable invites to and it was there, caught in my throat right there with the smoke, and for a brief, fleeting moment I wanted them to know. "You see the word Lush there, in bold on the fifth page's Letters section? Yeah, well, that's me."

It would have been so easy, and it wouldn't, couldn't come out. It absolutely couldn't come out. For them to see it and know, to attach the faces and names to every post would be the death of all of the honesty I have in me and reserve for here. It's why I carry my notebook with me everywhere I go and hide it if I'm sleeping, showering or if my purse is too small to fit it in. It's why I lock all of my old, finished notebooks in a desk to which only I have the key.

Not to be too morbid on a Friday afternoon or anything, but here it goes: I often wonder what'll happen to them if I die unexpectedly.

...yeah, too morbid. But one more reason to stay alive long enough to see my eventual death coming I guess.