I’m learning about myself again.
I’m learning that in some ways I am exactly the same person I was as a child. I’m still that shy girl that wants to be in the middle of the group, just enjoying the company of friends, feeling understood and wanted, being happily silent.
But friends like that get harder to find that as you get older. I’ve had some really good friends, particularly at university, but I still felt like I had to reserve a lot of my true self to fit in.
The only people I’ve found I could even begin to share my ‘real me’ with have been friends from the Christian community, but only because most Christians my age find it rather natural to talk of matters of the heart, the internal world. I feel like I can share my weaknesses with people like that. But I still don’t feel comfortable sharing my eccentricities.
I know I’m a bit weird. Actually very weird. Dave gets that. I often talk complete gibberish to him, and he somehow infers the meaning from context. If I did that with anyone else they would think I was having a seizure. Sometimes I think there is something fundimentally wrong with the way I behave. Shame none of my doctors have picked up on it thus far…
And then there’s my musician side. This one is much more tricky. How do you explain to the average person in the street what it means to feel the only reason you exist is to produce a particular selection of pitches set to words about your feelings? How would I explain that to a friend for the first time? What if I was to make a friend that understood that implicitly?
Recently I found a person that did just that, but that brought a new problem. How do I pretend I’m not excited to know a person like that? How do I keep a lid on my excitement over feeling like a kid again?
Truth is I can’t.
I always give my friends fabulous advice about being honest and open, that you should lay all your cards on the table and show you trust the other person with your heart. But it had been many years since I was in a position like that. In my naive idealism I decided to be brave and take my own advice.
What I had forgotten is that for every honest moment and the high you feel, there is a hangover of vulnerability to deal with. I’m feeling that hangover right now. It’s tough keeping a thin skin, staying soft-hearted. I want to stay honest, trusting. But I still feel foolish right now. I was happy. I just wanted to share that feeling.
I am happy. I’m just embarrassed. -__-‘
PS.
This is the first post I’ve filed under ‘existential crisis’ since January. Kind of like resetting the ‘Accident free for __ days’ sign. Blah…