this is a very old school style post for me – back in the day, i had xanga and a secret blogspot. i’m sorry if it’s not what you’ve come to expect, or enjoy. but it’s really all i’ve got at the moment. anything else feels way too false. also, it was written last week, and things are looking a bit up, so promise me you won’t worry. that’s not my goal.

i find myself staring at strangers, wanting to know all their secrets. it used to be a fetish of mine – i would play a tit for tat game of the exchange of information, i was desperate to understand how the pieces formed the whole. quid pro quo, doctor. i hardly thought of myself as a person so i gave up my facts readily but in a calculated sequence. i established trust, i targeted those who seemed neediest. i cared, but in a way i didn’t. it was a dark game. don’t worry, i haven’t done it in years. it was borne of an intellectual teenager’s angst, and if i’ve done nothing else, i’ve grown up.

and i think of how funny it is, that there are words that choke me when I’m talking to people who already love me, whom i already love (that’s a thing, i have no idea when to use who and whom. i apologize. i promise most of my grammar is very good). that i’ve never written the bouncer a love letter – it’s something i used to do but that part of me… i don’t know where it is or even if it still is. at all. i don’t, in many ways, recognize myself after the past seven years.

in most ways i write off my crazy as sort of a joke, just a quirky thing. it’s not, really, and i know that, but how else do you deal? i laugh loudly at the things that irk me, at how i can be so obsessive, but really i’m dealing with inexplicable body aches several days a week. i don’t know what to think they’re from besides constant worry. i tell people playfully about issues between the bouncer and i. no one really knows when i’m sobbing until 3am because of any one of several things that happened three years ago, that he’s apologized for over and over, that i can’t let go of. i say, i couldn’t sleep last night, but no one knows that i was standing at my open window at 1am, arms up on the sill, leaning, eyes drooping, wondering how the fuck i was going to deal with another day, exhausted.

well, now you all know. i promise, this isn’t a cry for help – i know there is help out there, i know how to get it. i know how this all sounds, but it’s not quite like that. i tell myself its not that bad. i just haven’t decided if that’s true or not.

believe me, i feel guilty. that i am not a ray of sunshine, that i don’t participate in the joyful beams of friendship that float around twitter and the internet – it’s just not me, but i swear, i’m not a black cloud. that i am just not as bright and shiny as everyone else. that i don’t cook the bouncer dinner so often anymore, or bake treats for him or my coworkers. i live with a lot of fear that you don’t like me, even if it seems like you do. i’m afraid that my side eyes, my waist size, my lack of religion, my layers, that they’re a thing that makes me hated. i wonder sometimes if the great majority of my social interactions are simply patronizing bullshit. i feel so guilty that i am me, and not a model of someone you’d like more.

it makes me sad and nervous to put this on the internet. my boss will probably read it, acquaintances that only know one face of me, people that might be shocked or uncomfortable. but if there’s anything we should all get used to, it’s that there’s always more than what you think to see. people are whole, and i like to believe that’s ok. and when all of the parts of a person maybe aren’t working together quite how they should, and they want to talk about it, maybe there shouldn’t be punishment for it. there’s precious little honesty out there – shouldn’t we treasure it?

i know this is scattered, rambly, and i wish it weren’t. i’m hoping fall brings me a new charge, a wave of refreshment somehow. i hope it has all just been the heat holding me down.