Chapter Text
In some way or another, Hailey had always liked to imagine that there was some kind of birdcage or something around her heart. Something solid and pretty that could protect her. It was weird as hell, and she knew it was, but—as strange as it definitely was, maybe reminding herself of that just made her feel less vulnerable. Less horribly afraid of her own emotions that always kept hurting her. Which, of course, felt overwhelmingly stupid to her sometimes; but it didn't really matter, because the birdcage thing still helped to at least some degree.
The thing was, there had never been a time in Hailey’s life when she'd ever treated the word “love” lightly. When she loved someone, she fucking meant it. If she told someone she loved and cared about them, she did, and for every person she ever loved in any romantic or platonic or familial sense of the word, she had a space in her heart carved out just for them. Which should've been a good thing, because caring about the people you care about is good and great, but what made it less good was that, if there was a metaphorical birdcage like Hailey convinced herself there was, she knew it was fragile as shit. It didn't take much for it to collapse and it didn't take much for her heart to take off running wherever the hell it wanted to go. She loved with her heart and soul and entire being, but she trusted too easily.
And that was what the problem was with people like her.
No matter what she told herself, she was vulnerable. She would get hurt. And no matter how much she tried to change it, she couldn’t. And it was the scariest thing she ever knew.
By this point in her life, with the tear-stained songbooks crammed on her shelves and the amount of mascara she’d ruined over the past few years, the fear Hailey had of her own unwavering trust in others would only get worse. She knew better than anyone that she would only keep getting hurt. And she knew that each new cut would always be deeper than the last; all until there was nowhere left to cut.
It was inevitable, really, that it would happen. She would be left with nothing but a wounded heart and unhealing scars. All because she couldn't fucking change.
Hailey had a lot of fears. But that— above even her stupid stage fright—was what really scared her to hell and back.