The fact....

that I can be - and am - enourmously moody - troubles me. Okay...maybe not troubles me, but it - irks me. Yes, that's it - it irks me that one moment I can be cheerful and laughing and pleasant, and the next moment I feel like running away from everyone and hiding under someone else's desk or just crying for no good reason.
And then sometimes I wonder - huh, maybe the cheerfulness is just me faking it - me,  with another one of my onion layered facades, and that the inner bits of me really are rather melancholy and withdrawn and quiet.
And then I think - no, no! That side of me is just a side effect from growing up alone and mainly within my own head, and the cheerfulness is the adult, grown up, mature flowering me.

And I think that's where the - disappointment comes from. I'm disappointed that I can't control my moods - that I can't put my finger on what causes the sudden shifts, that I can't avoid the low points and walk around them like puddles in the road. And then, of course, the disappointment allows me to drift jsut a little lower until - sproing! Suddenly, I'm normal again - or at least doing a very good job of pretending to be.

And I think the thing that irks me the most is that really - I have no room to be - sad, to be down, to be melancholy. I have a wonderful, full life - it's not perfect, by any stretch of the imagination, but dammit, day by day it becomes a little closer.

So who is this girl inside of me with the permanently downcast eyes and constantly troubled heart? And how, precisely, do I excise her out like a bad spot on an otherwise perfect apple?

I don't know. I often think that sharing would help - but - I can't do that. I - I won't do that, because saying that I can't is - patently untrue. I could - but - I'm withdrawn. Really. It's not that I don't trust you, and you - and sometimes you - but it's just that - I don't know. It doesn't feel safe, it doesn't feel right, and I won't take the risk of being judged for the chaotic emotions I have that might only be true just then.

I insist to one of my friends that I don't need affirmation from others - that I'm self contained and proud and centered in my perfectly me self so much that I don't need others suport and approval to prop me up...and I do think that's true. At the same time - the disapproval of others tears me down in instants, and while those two things shouldn't be able to be true at the same time - it's one of the reasons that I'm so withdrawn - so hidden - so internal. I can't handle criticism. And if others don't know about me, they can't criticize me, and I'm safe and contained and - comfortable in my personally created walls of exclusion.

And there have been times when I've tried to break loose - to really just hang my belly all out and let the totality of me be seen by everyone I know - and it's the most terrifying thing I've ever tried to do - and I find myself withdrawing and retreating and growing determinedly silent so that I don't step out of bounds - the bounds that I think are there, but aren't brave enough to ever actually challenge.

I try to analyze myself, to stand outside of me and turn me over in my hands and see just what the hell is really going on inside and beyond all this *waves hands madly* other stuff that I've grown like calluses on my heart - and - it's been a part of me for so long that I really don't know - sometimes I really don't know who I am, at the very root - and more importantly, I can't figure out if anything is wrong with me. No - not wrong with me - just - is there anything - that - just doesn't fit. Fit in my own perceptions of me, of course.

And I think - no, I know - that part of the problem is that I have never been able to break through the fear and let any one person know all of me - not my mother, not my best friend, not my husband - because by the time I feel safe enough to reveal my chaos  - it's too confusing for me to understand, much less someone else.  I'm - I'm trying my best to be - determinedly blunt with the new people in my life - but - silence and omission are just as hard to overcome as a blurted truth that turns into a lie a moment later.

I'm - I'm not very  emotional at all - and - when I am being emotional I feel like I'm being buffeted by storm winds that toss my certainties and beliefs from one extreme to the other, and if I whisper a word of where I'm at the next buffet will make it a lie. So I am emotional in silence, waiting until my head has done it's last calculation and my heart has confirmed that yes, this IS it's final answer - and by that time, what I've vocalized and what I feel might not sync up and - how do you retract something that was once truth and now isn't - without showing yourself to be a liar?

There should be a word for that  - something that isn't negative. Nothing as unethical as lying, or as weakminded as wishywashy - but something that says - this is what I felt then, and this is what I feel now, and both of those feelings were completely true and completely accurate and I'm just as likely to feel an entirely different way tomorrow - and without pulling something out of the DSM-IV either.

*sigh* I exhaust myself! I want to be - but I don't want to be - normal - all at once, and then I realize that each and every one of us probably does the same thing and has the same fears and wonders and worries and onion skins and we each feel just as disconnected and removed and want ever so desparately to yank of our facades and dance freely - but we're too afraid.

And - I think what irks me most of all is that I suspect the fear is groundless, and I'd be just as loved and just as smart and just as much ME without all the onion skins - but - I'm still paralyzed by - doubt. By uncertainty. By - desire to fit in, desire to be included, desire to be normal.

Bah. I don't know. Really, I don't know. The whole world is frowny and scary and dangerous and just downright MEAN sometimes and - I'm not brave enough to go out with my bare skin exposed and be me.