To the Truth

Mar 10th, 2012 12:18:00pm

I shut people out. Simple present, not past. It’s not something I had been doing in the time that I have been missing from this place, it’s what I do. I shut people out. I have built walls so high that the terms “expressionless” and “uncaring” are often used in conjunction with my name. And don’t just imagine a single boundary of brick and cement, oh no, but layers of them. Once you get over one, you find another, and another.
Someone very dear to me recently said, “They don’t even know you.”

I have always been aware of this. Anyone who has ever met me and tried to penetrate themselves into my psyche, tried to find out what goes on beneath the exterior I show them, is aware of this. They’re not stupid, and more than once I’ve felt their frustration and my ensuing guilt. However, it’s only when those words were spoken to me directly, pained and frustrated, that the thought has haunted me more than usual, resounding in my head whenever I interact with people.

Every time I’m speaking to a friend, there will be a moment that jars with it: “They don’t even know you.”

Every time I’m speaking to my family, even worse and more persistent: “They don’t even know you.”

No, they don’t. No one does. Not even me.

I’m a sensitive person (though this is the first time I’ve ever openly admitted it), who is growing up in a world where you’re taught that the sensitive don’t survive. Or at least are more beat down than the rest. This world has phenomenal beauty, tenderness, and kindness; that is undeniable. Yet to think that one can get by without a thick skin and a whole lot of strength is self-deluding. I learned that early, and found out that I couldn’t give myself thicker skin. I didn’t know how. So instead of learning how to keep as much of the world’s harshness out as I could, I learned to keep my weakness in where no one could see and take advantage of it.

I built walls.

And they’re cracking.

This blog was a place where I could reveal the part of me that I was too scared to show out in “reality”. It was a place where I could think more deeply, wonder more, dream more. It was a place where I dared to hope that I could make a difference, not only in the people who read it, but in myself. The truth is, though, this past year I have shrunk further and further inside myself. Walls I thought I was finally learning to let go of, came up bigger and more ominous than ever until I was so lost the people who meant most to me were literally terrified I was gone for good. Or would be, soon enough.

I stopped dreaming. I stopped thinking deeper. I stopped wondering. I stopped writing, and reading, the two things that could always induce me to feel. I didn’t even have an interest for them anymore. I stopped being the person this blog is an embodiment of, because I couldn’t stand the weight of it. Have you ever felt that? That crushing weight of all the people you could be, all the people you want to be and all the people you don’t, screaming and shoving each other inside of you like it’s a crowd at the most popular ride in the fair…

And you don’t know who’s who, so you don’t know who to let out, what the consequences would be.. So you sit there being practically nothing. Playing different roles for different people, never really knowing which one is you. They all are, but they all aren’t, and it does your head in just thinking about it. Then you start feeling like a fake, like maybe none of you is real and you’ve always been an empty shell made only to be what people need you to be at any given moment.

It’s been a long, dark rabbit hole that I’ve been travelling in this past year, and there’s more to go yet.

However, a few days ago, I decided to try writing myself to the truth once more. “Writing my way to the truth” is a phrase a former tumblr-writer used to use. I’ve always adored it, and I hope she doesn’t mind my borrowing it now, because that’s what I used to do here. I have not found my cause, so I tried writing myself into one. I have not the strength that people think I do, so I made my words my pillars. I could not, can not, guide myself to where I need to be yet, so I try to guide others in the hope that one day, maybe I’ll give myself the courage I still don’t have to follow the dreams I refuse to admit to. I don’t reveal myself in person, to anyone, so I revealed little bits of myself through writing.

I don’t even know all of me yet, so I hoped to discover it along the way.

It felt wrong, sometimes. It felt hypocritical and fake. And I’m sure it will again, during days where it’s darker in the tunnel than usual, but it’s all I have for now.

So maybe someday I will find the truth I seek. I don’t know what it is yet, but that’s part of the fun, isn’t it? We’re all searching for a truth that we won’t recognize till we’re ready to find.

I think it’s time I shared my search with you again.

I shall not return to signing off. Because truly, whatever I choose to call myself, be it Dreamer, Warrior or perhaps even Seeker, it will always end up subject to change dependent upon the stage I am in in that moment. A dreamer imagines, a warrior fights for the right to make that imagination reality and a seeker searches for the truth that will help him obtain that reality.

Right now, though?

I dream.