A carpeting of pain covers the floor. It stings my elbows and scuffs my knees, but it's warm and I've perfected the art of moving in such a way that the pain has become comfortable -- The walls are filled with sorrow. I slump against them in the corner, its warmth seeps through and into my body -- Anger is weaved into the rugs. I carefully lay them over the empty black holes in the floor which I'm terrified of falling through -- Hate covers the glass in the windows. What's beyond them seems even more distant than it probably is -- A smoke of betrayal fills the room. It disorientates me, fills my lungs and becomes merely a part of each breath I take -- And in the middle of my security zone I sit, wrapped up tight in a ball of my despair, weaving more rugs of anger and building weapons with my hate.

People like myself sit in their own security zones, wrapped in despair, building their own weapons. We build our weapons to fight the battles; to win the war. We build them with the feelings we got from the people in our lives who have knocked us down, and from the people who continue to knock us down. We build them to fend off the hurt. People like myself build up walls with the sadness they feel to protect them from people, to shield them from pain and hurt. We keep ourselves locked away, refusing to open the door to anyone, not allowing anyone close to us. We stand in the windows, fending off anyone who wants to get inside by throwing our rugs of hate over them. We bring out all of our armor, all of our weapons to beat away those people who want to get inside our walls.

Being hurt by people isn't so bad when you can use all of those feelings to make your weapons. We're skilled in using these weapons to keep people out, not just the ones who want to hurt us, but especially those who give no indication of a desire to harm us. They are the people that scare me, not the ones who beat me down and hurt me, but the few who genuinely appear to care. "What do they want from me?" I ask myself over and over again as they approach. Nobody has ever wanted anything from me but the need to see me suffer, the need to hurt me and try to break me. Why should I think any differently of other people? And why on earth would I risk losing my safety zone by letting anyone inside??

I gather up my weapons and use them freely. I use them to merely exist, to deal with situations, to solve problems. One weapon I've built I use in most of my dealings with people, my dealings with feelings and emotions. It's the weapon I've learnt to use the best, it's the easiest to reach for because it's always available. It's always sitting there right in my hands, and as my fingers clasp tight around it I know exactly how to use it and it feels comfortable. This weapon is my hurt and hate. And why not use the weapon that I've always had, the one that's the easiest to use? I'd be pretty stupid if I picked up a weapon I wasn't skilled in and tried fighting my battles with it, wouldn't I? I'd lose every single time. This one weapon I use so often doesn't work so well, but it works. It gets me through. I know I'll never run out of hurt that I can use, never get rid of it all no matter how much I throw it around. This weapon is what I use to push everyone away.

Somehow it's comfortable to push them away, the people who do care about me and that I love. If I let them in I become vulnerable, if I open myself up to them they can hurt me. I feel naive, pathetic, scared. I want to push them away because I don't want them to hurt me. I want to make them hate me so they'll go away and stop trying to get in. I want to try and hate them. I'll try to love others, to care about people that I don't. It's easier to accept being hurt by someone you don't deeply care about than it is to be hurt by a person that you truly love. And when they do hate me, when I've gotten what I was pushing for, it's easy to deal with. "This person that loves me has left" - but that's okay, you shrug it off because you knew they would, because you pushed them to leave. I don't want to let the ones that I love in because then I give them the opportunity to hurt me. And I'm so scared that the people I care about will hurt me, more than the people I don't care for. It hurts more coming from a person that I care about. Why would I want to risk being hurt greater than I already am?

I hate myself sometimes when I push the people I love away. I hate myself for hurting them, and I hate myself for making them leave, even though it was what I wanted. The ones I love and love me make me feel something that I don't know how to deal with, that makes me want to open up to them, and that terrifies me. I don't know how to love them the way they deserve to be loved, and I don't know how I deserve to be loved so I'm scared they won't know either and will hurt me. The fear of them hurting me, the fear of me hurting them overwhelms everything else and I just want to get away. I have to get them away from me, because I'm scared and I convince myself that they will be better off without me in their life. So I push them away and make them hate me, then drown in the sadness caused by that. I feel sometimes like I don't deserve any more chances because I do hurt people I care about and that care about me. But I still want those chances. I want them so much. And I drown in the sadness when I know some people refuse me more chances with them. But I know I deserve that, and I deserve to have them hate me.

Chaos and madness surround me, but it can't hurt me so bad when the war is happening beyond my walls. It can't break me if I stay within my walls and don't let the war inside, but instead fight it from the comfort and safety of my security zone. I stand at the windows often, staring out. When the war dies down a little I look out at the war beyond mine and wish I could join that one. Sure it's lonely sometimes being confined in this way, but at least I can control the war in a way that I can't do if I let anyone inside. But can I win it, can I really win this war?

This war - a war of existing. A war of living? No. I'm not living. I'm surviving, I'm existing, but not living. And I never can while I stay locked up inside these walls. I thought I could. I wish I could. But I've realized I can't. I've realized that as long as I stay here building my weapons I'm going to use them on the few people who don't deserve to be hurt by me. I've realized that not only does using my hurt as a weapon merely cast a blanket over the battles, but it passes on the hurt to other people. I can't keep shifting all of my hurt and sadness onto other people. I can't use my weapons to beat them away from me anymore. I can't keep pushing people out because I feel alone enough already. I can never win any war when I'm fighting against the wrong people with the wrong weapons.

Sometimes someone will come knocking at the door, on the walls, calling out to me. Wanting to come inside, to be close. I run to the windows and look out. My vision is clouded by the hate smeared across the glass, perhaps the view I have of this person is distorted. All I see is a person cloaked in hate, and I don't need anymore hate. I don't need anymore hurt. So I refuse to open the door, to let them in. Perhaps my entire view of everything - the world, people, the war, is clouded because I'm looking at it all through these grimy windows. Everything I see is blanketed in this hate, my hate. Maybe I need not to let people inside, but rather step out from inside my walls. Perhaps then I can fight a different war. Not the war of existing, but the war of living.

I'm tired of fighting to exist. I want to live. I want to feel love and be loved and have everything that I deserve from this world. Existence is not an easy war to fight, but it's the only one I know how to survive in. It's the only one I have the weapons for. Existence is comfortable, it keeps me warm. But it keeps me warm with hate, not love. And I want to feel the warmth of love all around me. It's frightening, it's terrifying to WANT to put myself out there and make myself vulnerable, to put down my weapons. But it's what I have to do to live. I know that now. It's hard to leave this existence war behind, it's hard to leave my security zone and step out from behind my walls. It's hard when I can't find the door.

The carpeting stings my knees more and more all the time as I try to crawl along the floor. Scabs form on my knees, I try to pick away at the sores the pain has caused. The layers of paint I used to hide away the sorrow inside the walls as it seeped through have started to peel and fall to the floor. I wrap myself in the rugs, but picking up the anger exposes the holes in the floor and I fear falling through. The hate on the windows is so thick no light is able to penetrate and I find it harder to look out through them. I choke on the betrayal, the smoke stings my eyes and suffocates me. These days I feel like I'm in a burning building, the walls close in all around me and I feel trapped. And the warmth from all the hate, anger, betrayal and hurt which was once comfortable now grows warmer and warmer until the searing heat burns me.

People like me are good people. The hurt has made us hide it, it's made us defend ourselves and erect the walls around ourselves. It forces us to spit venom, think hate, and keep one eye open when we sleep. It's a part of us that we will never truly lose, and we can live with it until it consumes us, but we don't want to. No-one in this war of existence wants to be there, but it's so hard to find the way out sometimes. Our weapons have been in our hands for so long that we feel naked without them. But we're only trapped until we start looking for the door.

I've never needed the door before, I'm not even sure if there is one. But whatever I have to do - if I have to have a key to get through the door, if I have to build one to unlock it - if I have to look for a while to even find the door, that's alright because I've already started searching. If I can't find a door then I'll beat down the walls, I'll fly over them - I'll do anything I need to do to get out. And I know that if I find it difficult, if I stumble, if I stand in the doorway for a while before I step out, I will always have somebody now to hold my hand as I step through. What I've needed all along is the thing I was furiously beating and pushing away.

I know a weapon to use in the living war ... your heart. You open it, and you let it bleed and you fill it with something new, something good. And then you've won. No matter how many times anyone EVER hurts you again they can't win, because you have something back that was stolen from you a long time ago. Something the people who hurt you ripped from you, something they mashed, they burned, they stuck a blade in it and twisted it over and over again. They MADE you put walls around it, they made you surround it with electric razor-wire. Why? So that you would be just like them. Because MISERY LOVES COMPANY! And I refuse to be their company anymore. Nobody wants that, and deep inside we all have the strength and courage to walk away from the pain they surrounded you with. They beat you to the point where you end up being no better than them, because you hurt people you love. No matter how much it hurts you have to get away from it and step out from your walls, because if you don't, then they've won. The war of existence makes you hide the love you have inside you. And when it's been so long you forget where it is. And where did you put it? Where's the key? Look inside ... it's there.

I hope that once I've stepped out into the living war, I can knock down this room I've locked myself away in for so long and never return to the existing war. But living might be more frightening than existing at first, and I might just turn and run back through the door and behind my walls. I might need to become adjusted to it, I might need to test the water. First I may just dip my toes in, then a little more, maybe up to my knees. Then a little more after that, and more after that, until finally not only will I feel comfortable having the water all around me, but I can submerge my entirety and learn to swim.

Deep down I wouldn't want to return, but it's a comfort that has enveloped me for so long. I know not how to LIVE, only how to EXIST. I don't have all the weapons that I might need. But if I do return it doesn't mean I don't want to live, it won't mean that I've given up, it means I'm scared. And for every time I run back to the safety of my room, there will be another attempt to step back out. And it will get easier all the time because after the initial step I will know how to. And I deserve that chance. And so does every other person like me.

I can't teach anyone else how to find the door or break down the walls or how to step out from behind their walls. I wish I could, but I can't. All I can do is tell them to look inside for the strength I know they have. All I can do is stand by them and be there to welcome them and hold them for a little while after they walk out. All I can do is tell them that as long as they keep searching for the way out, it will be there.

All they need is the same understanding and the same chances as I've been given now, all they need is someone to hold their hand as they walk out, all they need is for someone to understand what they are doing and how hard it is.

You may not be able to understand the place we're coming from, but you are where we want to be. And we deserve the chance and the help needed to join you in the war of living.