The fear of ourselves 12/08/2026

My head has been a bit of a fu.king mess lately. I’ve been living in it. Properly living in it. Almost like I’ve been hovering somewhere just outside my own body while my brain runs seventeen different scenarios, conversations, possibilities and catastrophes at once. Meanwhile on the outside Im covering it with she’ll be right mate and that’s just how I roll. There is a lot that can live behind a well practised she’ll be right dont you think.

I can put my hand on my heart and say that I don’t trust easily. Because I don’t trust easily, I don’t share easily either. I don’t ask for help much. I take things on. I carry them. I analyze them. Then I overanalyse the analysis until I’m basically trying to think my way out of something that probably needed to be felt in the first fu.king place. THAT is usually my big internal what the fu.k are you doing Lissa alarm bell.

Stop. Breathe back into my body. Come back in. Feel.

So I try to get back to the crux of being a human being, instead of a floating brain with anxiety and a to do list. It’s wild how far our heads can lead us away from our hearts if we let them. That’s where I’ve been lately. Thinking about friendship. Love. Loyalty. Loss.

The people who come into our lives and the people who somehow disappear from them. Over the years and definitely over the last six or eight  I’ve watched friendships I absolutely adored disappear like fog moving across the earth. Women I would have gone to the ends of the fucking earth for. Women I would have climbed onto a dragon for. Women I would have happily helped slay bitches for. Gone. Some through enormous fractures. Some through things I still consider unforgivable. Some without a dramatic ending at all. They just slowly became memories.

Underneath every single one in one way or another, I have flogged myself. What did I do…..What is wrong with me….Why can’t I be understood….Why can’t I just be me…Why does there always seem to be some invisible unsaid thing expected of me that I somehow didn’t know I was supposed to deliver. Maybe there’s a pity party tucked in there somewhere. Fu.k probably. I’m human.

There’s something else in there too. Hurt people hurt people. I know there is a part of me capable of that. There is a deeply ingrained part of me that I used to be scared of. The part that goes absolutely feral when someone I love is hurt. The I will cut a bitch part. The part whose loyalty can become teeth. Sometimes my loyalty has been one of the most beautiful things about me, sometimes it has smacked me square in the fu.king face.

There is one place, one value where I am incredibly black and white on Ive noticed.

Integrity.

If you sit with me and say horrible things about someone, I remember. If you tell me who someone is, what they’ve done why you want nothing to do with them, I remember. If in the next breath you’re suddenly so far up their arse I can barely see your shoes because somehow the relationship now benefits you......I remember that too. I see it. I hear it. I feel it. I remember it. Something in me struggles deeply with it. That isn't always a good way to be. We know forgiveness is softer. Grace gives people room to change their minds, repair things, grow, see something differently. I understand all of that. I also believe your words should mean something. If you can’t put your whole being behind the things you say particularly when those words affect other people, or when they are not in the room to defend themselves then I start wondering whether I ever really knew who I let into my life.

Eventually memories become what’s left. I tend to park those somewhere. That’s another thing I do. When something hurts so fu.king much that I don’t know what to do with it, I put it somewhere else. I don’t want to live inside the hurt. I don’t want to become consumed by it. I would rather walk away carrying a broken heart than become deliberately cruel in the ways cruelty has sometimes been shown to me. Although... I’m not going to pretend there isn’t another part of me. Because there fu.king is. When you discover that the love you gave wasn’t received in the way you thought it was... When something you wrote or said from your heart can be taken, twisted and turned into something ugly... When someone who knew you can choose an interpretation of you that feels so far removed from who you actually are... That hurts. That’s when the other Lissa arrives.

The one who would quite like to throat punch someone. The one who knows exactly where the baneful magic lives and isn't afraid to look at it. I used to think that part of me was something I needed to get rid of. Something too dark. Too angry. Too much.

I don't anymore. If I strip all the dramatic shit away, the truth underneath it is actually painfully simple: My heart breaks and for a moment I want to break something back. That’s dark. It’s also honest. Knowing that part exists doesn’t mean I have to hand it the fu.king steering wheel. Maybe that’s the difference now.

I can sit beside my anger without becoming it. I can acknowledge the hurt without turning it into a weapon. I can know that somewhere inside me is a woman on a dragon, sword raised, ready to burn the entire fucking village down...and gently tell her not today babe.

Does any of this mean I’ll close my heart and never make another connection…No. Absolutely fu.king not. Will I be a little more careful with my trust.  Yes. I think that’s okay.

I don't know how to be nonchalant with the people I love. I don't know how to pretend something means nothing when it meant everything to me. I don't know how to shrug my shoulders and say easy come, easy go about humans I once held close to my heart.

Maybe I never will. I don't actually want to. I just need to remember that protecting my heart and closing it are not the same thing. When my head starts dragging me miles away from myself, inventing answers, replaying conversations and trying to understand things I may never understand...

Stop. Breathe. Come back into my body. Come back to my heart.

She might be bruised. She might be fucking furious. She might occasionally own a metaphorical dragon and have questionable ideas about what we should do with it. But she is still open and for now that is more than enough.

That is my biggest learning