Sometimes (like most people I’m sure) I hate myself. Honestly, it’s a revolving door of things I dislike but today it is “what past trauma has done to me.” When I was younger I used to be a very giving person. My parents taught me to give more than I received. What we did not anticipate is that people are selfish users. It’s funny now that we all learned a valuable lesson at different stages of our lives. Yet we responded the same way. We over-corrected and thus became suspicious of everyone.

My solo cruise is coming up at the end of this month and I grow ever more uneasy. It’s terrifying just thinking of traveling “internationally” alone. So many scenarios run through my head… Primarily around getting kidnapped. (Not like I’m that easy to snatch…) Other ones include getting lost or left behind by the cruise line. From these fears I’m starting to panic and think of people I could take with me as a safety net. I’m already paying for the second person anyway… I might as well. What stops me is that the WHOLE POINT is to do something by myself. Which I’ve never done before.

I can’t take my BF because he has to work and is saving his vacation time for our cruise in July. I don’t want to take my brother because I am so weirdly co-dependent that it would make things worse. Plus, sometimes I get the feeling that my BF thinks that I’m going to run off with him and leave him behind. (That’s his own childhood trauma talking though.) So, neither is a viable option.

One of the leading contenders (in my head) is this young guy I have coined as “black jack,” because he’s 21 years old. (I’m super clever, right?) His real name is Ryan but I have 2 others in my circle and so saving “seconds” from having to explain which one I’m referring to, I gave him a cutesy little name.

I have mentioned it to him in passing but… I started to get paranoid that this youngun was just befriending me to use me for this trip. Granted… I brought it up to him… and he hasn’t given me any cause to think that at all. It’s just my own intense past trauma.

In addition, I didn’t want my BF to think that I was replacing him or using this trip as a way of getting closer to Blackjack. That’s not even in the orbit of the sphere of possibility. I’m not like that. I can control my feelings from getting attached or fall for someone. What I don’t have the power to do is keep someone else from feeling a certain way. If I took him, would he “fall for me?” I don’t want to hurt someone and he’s so young that I absolutely would. That is, if they’re real emotions and not tied to what I can offer him: “stability.”

Past experience has made me so jaded. I’m leery of people who are just being my friend to get something from me. My husband and I were suckers… We had a roommate use us to pay for his fucking rent and cell phone. We did it because we thought he was our friend but he peaced the fuck out and didn’t bother to tell us he was done until we had wasted buckets of money.

This fear and my own fear of being alone have made me so paranoid and uneasy. This whole trip is meant to be fun, yet here I sit dreading the entire experience. (Watch… I’ll just sit in my room the whole time.)