Confusing Thoughts From A Confused Girl Who Finds Her Own Thoughts To Be Confusing

I thought a lot this week about the sides of a personality.  How on one hand you may be calm in the face of certain kinds of people, friends, and then a maniac emerges around others who perhaps know you best.  You may not want to admit the different sides of a personality that you like or dislike; it may be even embarrassing to admit the anxieties, the depression, the hidden psychosis’ to others because people do judge.  Even if they say they don’t, we all do, some are just more blatant about it than others.

My parents visited this weekend.  My husband’s parents also visited.  I felt like two sides of a person who are forced to meet in the middle in one form or the other and then there is my husband who seemingly knows all of me having to watch the collision like it’s one of those wrecks on the side of the road where you know you shouldn’t stare but it’s pretty impossible not to.  I'm a certain way around my parents, although I do try hard to be myself, and maybe I alert them to snippets of the person who I am today, but it’s only the highlighted reel I’m afraid.  I want to be the dutiful daughter, the type A person that I was in high school, that hates to disappoint everyone, although I’m really not any of those people….not anymore anyway.

Do you ever look at a relationship and remember when it was a something but now because of time and maturity and time (did I already mention time) things have changed and you really don't think you know that person anymore even if they share parts of you that you like or maybe don’t but they are you in a sense but not you at the same time?

Growing up is weird.  It’s like you live in different versions of the person that maybe you eventually will become and you hope whoever that person is you like, but what if you don’t at the end of the day?  What if you like the version of you that was 20 years ago?  The person that had ideals, had a vision, had a dream?  What do you do when the dream dies because reality is dark and close and not at all what you thought it would, should, could be?  Do you shrivel up like a prune?  (I heard a comedian once say that he likes raisins because they have actually been through something and now I can’t look at the plum family the same way).

There are times when I know that I have to engage with people in large or even small groups and I dilligently choose the metaphorical hat to wear for the chosen occasion.  It’s like I’m not just picking out my outfit for the night, but the person that I will allow this particular group of people to see for the time being.  Then there are other times when I’m sullen. I revert into my own self and refuse to give any of it away because it’s not deserved, won’t be respected or even enjoyed.

Please tell me I’m not the only one who thinks about such things? I’m not the only one who struggles with giving themselves away to people that won’t understand what is given in the first place.  There is no worse feeling than trying to talk to someone, attempt an engagement that you are forcing, but trying nonetheless, and witness the glaze crust over their eyes as their brain turns away from who you are, what you want to share and give and be.  Unfortunately, it really has nothing to do with you.  People are going through their own shit and whatever it is you were sharing probably wasn’t or isn’t relevant to their lives and thus not relevant to the little bit of brain power that is needed for their engagement to be intact.  It just hurts when you open yourself up in such a way and then are forced to be pushed down to the size of an ant.  But people are people and are all pretty selfish at the end of the day.  Sometimes I find it better to escape into the confines of my own head because at least in there I have a kind of understanding.

Maybe that’s why animals were created.  To allow us a living thing that will love all the parts of us, even when it becomes morphed into something that may be unrecognizable for the people that knew you once upon a time.

Reader, if you find this all to be confusing or maybe relatable or maybe it’s frustration that burns a hole deep within your belly, know that you are not the only one.  Because life has a tendency to be all of those things, rolled together and sprinkled with brightly colored, or maybe even it's dully colored, aspects of who you are today and the future person you are one day going to become.