Back from the camping weekend she had spent with friends, she reflected on the emotions that had stirred within her as she unpacked the quilts, blankets and pillows she had brought this year. Last year she had been sleepless, freezing in the sleeping-bag which claimed to be suitable for sub-zero temperatures, and she had been determined not to be cold in her tent this year. Are we completely powerless against the scripts running in the background of our minds, or perhaps in our subconscious? She thought about those painful behaviour patterns, shaped early in life, that seemed so impossible to challenge. She could identify a few in herself and wondered how many she was still unaware of. Somehow, they kicked in to protect her from pain, yet how rarely they achieved what they intended. She grappled around in the events of Saturday morning to find out what had triggered her withdrawal from the others this weekend, the slight aloofness and silence that were meant to communicate the vulnerability and insecurity she was experiencing, but ended up with her, well, just being on the outside of things and enhancing her insecurity intensely. How tiring it all is, she thought as she pushed the airbeds in under the empty bed where her darling once slept before he died.

She had come to understand that this particular reactive behaviour, her withdrawal from her dearest friends, stemmed from a deeply rooted fear of being abandoned or rejected. It had become helpful to think of her actions as the result of involuntary scripts running in the background of a computer. The computer quietly carries on with its work. What we don’t see are the countless processes running beneath the surface, interpreting every command through layers of code and scripts that few of us could ever recognise. In much the same way, our minds respond to life through patterns written long ago.

Her own inner scripts she kept carefully concealed, revealing only the fragments that escaped into her behaviour. She would observe herself shutting down, her eyes aching with hot tears that would only be released in solitude. When the fear that her self-destructive behaviour had finally pushed her friends away, that this was the last time they would put up with her, would overwhelm her. Then she would carry herself across the event horizon into the terrifying reality where only rejection existed. Only then, when the pain could no longer be contained, could she cry.

Was she really the only person doing things like this, feeling like this? she wondered. She had never seen her closest friend react this way. Everyone else appeared so composed, so emotionally balanced, able to choose their responses rather than be swept along by them. Perhaps they experienced these impulses too, but somehow overrode them before they reached the surface.

What would happen if anyone else really knew what was going on inside her? How would he react if she let him see the impossible kaleidoscope of shards within her, scattered in their irregularities, while she ached for them to settle into a pattern long enough for her to convey the story they carried? Long enough for him to see that even these seemingly unpredictable pieces were not random at all, but followed a pattern written long ago. If only he could understand her—not simply the fragments he witnessed, not merely the moments that seemed irrational or inexplicable, but the hidden script beneath them. Perhaps then, at last, her fear would ease—not because the fragments had disappeared, but because someone else had finally learned to see the pattern they formed.

Perhaps, if he stayed with her in the brokenness she had concealed for so long, she would discover that being seen did not have to mean being abandoned. That maybe the hidden parts of her could be known, and she could still be loved.