How the Me Ticks...

Sometimes I feel like I don't understand anything. I feel like I don't really get how most everything works. I feel at a loss as to how the dynamics of friendship and how even you are supposed to relate to people in general works. I don't have great interpersonal relationship skills. I often don't realize when someone is joking or when someone is serious. I am easily deceived and am surprised still when it happens. I am much too naive for someone my age, but can't seem to "grow up" as it were. I have been through more bad crap than a lot of people much older than me, but in some ways I feel like a child still. Like I see things through innocent eyes still, but with a shift of a button, these rose-colored glasses come off, and I see through the eyes of a cynic. How is it even possible to be both? To see things in both ways? How is it possible to feel naive about so much, but feel so old in regards to other things?

In some ways I feel like a wisened old woman, but in others, I am so very easily fooled, I trust much too easy, and am burned much too often. Like a child. Yet I feel like I learn nothing from those burns. I continue to have faith in people, when in reality, I have more reason to think the worst of them, to be a bitter person, and don't be fooled, I can be bitter. I can forgive but have a hard time forgetting. But I continue to open my heart to people, and only can hope, that this time, it will have been the right decision. I have no idea what makes me do this. It doesn't even feel as if it is a decision I make, on my part. It just is, as it is. You would think, I'd have learned my lesson, that after being burned so often, I would learn to keep my heart out of the fire, but I continue to risk it all, and throw myself whole-heartedly into the flames. But I don't do it on purpose. It's like something is ingrained in me. Maybe, as has been suggested, I am too tender hearted, too giving of my heart. But how do you stop something, you don't seem to have a choice in?

And do you even have a choice, if it is something that is ingrained into the fiber of your very being? God made us all a certain way, is this that part of me? Will I always leave myself open to hurt and being used? And is this for a reason? Is this tender-heartedness on purpose, so that my heart is open for when people I am meant to share it with, are there to hold my heart in their hands...and not throw it back in my face...or smash it with the heels of their feet? Is there a reason why I can't seem to be a cynic when it comes to people? It is something I am curious about. Is there a reason for absolutely everything? I feel like I should have, could have turned into a very different person than I am. I could see myself as a cold, closed off cynic, who never gave people the benefit of the doubt, who always assumed people were after something. A person who didn't give anyone a chance unless they had somehow proved themselves worthy...but somehow that is not the person who I am.

I have a wall around my heart, but it seems very easy to climb or pull down. Kindness doesn't make me suspicious, it makes me hopeful. Hopeful that I have found a kindred soul, someone who will accept me as I am, with all my many strange and varied faults. Someone who will take my hand when I fall, and help me stand up, brush off my knees and start the journey again. Hold to the iron rod, is what they say, it will lead you along the right path. Unfortunately, I feel like I stumble much too often and lose my way, lose site of the path, and am surrounded by darkness. And when I am sure it is time to give up, to give in to the voice telling me I was never worthy, someone grasps my hand and leads me back, even when I am unsure the path really is the right way to go. But once I feel that iron under my hand, I grasp it so tight, wanting nothing more than to make it to that final point, where I will be in the warm embrace of something so great, all my doubts and fears will be washed away.

I wonder, is that the reason my heart is still so open? Because there are still many hands I need to find to make sure I hold tight and make it to that warmth? I feel like I have found some trustworthy hands, ones I can hold onto, and won't lead me astray. Hands that I was meant to know. Even though I found these hands in a most unconventional way, they feel just as firm as the hands of those close to me, in proximity.

I don't know what made me decide to write these words, I just felt a need to type and once I did, things just started flowing from my fingers into the keyboard, forming thoughts and feelings. I have felt such excitement in finding the people I have, I have gotten giddy and rambled on about how I was so lucky to have found people, who for some reason, saw the real me, and didn't run screaming into the night. People who I layed out all my problems for the world to see, leaving me at my most vulnerable, but made me glad I did. Sure, most are far away from me, and maybe we won't meet in person until another life, but it doesn't feel like they are very far away. It feels like they are right at my fingertips, waiting for me...holding out their hands.

That is the end for now of this, for real, meandering. I guess sometimes you just need to get stuff out of you, in some form, and it happened to be in words this time. Sometimes it can be sketches, sometimes emotional outbursts, this time the words just needed to be thought out, flowing from somewhere inside me...apparently needing to be shout out. I'm not even sure if I should post this, so for now I will let it sit in my post pile...waiting to see if there is a day where I feel, it is meant to be heard...even if it is by the few people who read what I write. I guess sometimes, you just need words to be there, in black and white, to feel an inner sense of calm, that they are out there...somewhere.

If I post this and you read it, then thank you. Maybe you are one of the hands I will grasp when I get lost in the shadows, looking to find my way back to the path...the path that will lead me to where I belong...and to the people who will welcome me with open arms. And if you are, then I thank you, I need all the hands I can hold onto. They have been a rarity, but maybe I want to believe that they are there...waiting for me too. Maybe there has been other hands reaching out, and we will find our way back together.