My wish isn't to mean everything to everyone but something to someone.

It’s hard to admit when you want something. Really want something. It’s easy with trivial things like “I want a drink” or “I want to go on holiday” and “I want to go to sleep”. Those sorts of wants are easy to express, easy to talk about, because those sorts of things don’t make you vulnerable. Everyone wants those things and everyone knows that you want them too.

How do you express feelings that you’ve never really had before? How do you say ‘I want this’ if you’ve never had it, never tried it, always pulled away from it or ignored it completely?

It’s easier to block it all out, keep it close to you, tight to your chest so that no one else can see it, so no one else could even think that those feelings and thoughts were there, buried deep inside of you.

Sticking to fairytales and books of what you secretly crave, secretly want and need just as much if not more than any other person. Sticking to make-believe is safe. It’s not easier, but you get used to it. You resign yourself to the fact that people are not like their novel counterparts, that there is no Mr Darcy’s out there, only lots of and Mr Wickham’s and the dreaded Mr Collins’s.

As a rule, I don’t open up about things. Not to my mum, not to my best friend, not even to myself most of the time. It’s not as hard as you might think, lying to yourself about what you’re really feeling, what you’re really wanting, needing. It’s a battle of wills and the stubborn bitch that refuses to let one chink of armour get damaged always wins.

I think I’m not...worthy. I don’t deserve to be happy like that. I don’t deserve to show myself like that to someone. I know people who’re such loving, caring, considerate people who should be happy and would make anyone they’re with happy. I don’t think I could be that to someone.

Sometimes I wonder whether I really will be that weird friend of the family who used to babysit your children, yet never had any of her own. The weird only lady who sits at home watching tv with her cats, dreaming of the days when she was younger and didn’t know that her life would turn out like this.