Stage Five...

I've taken a big risk by putting a lot of my business out here in the wild wild Internet like this. All it really does it make it easier for some people to track and assume what they think they know about who I am as a person. For others I hope I offer a little motivation to simply be who you are without letting the opinions of others affect anything in your life.

Many years ago I had a female friend who I lived with. (and her mom). In one of our conversations, she told me I had a 'mystery' about me and that I seem to not want people in. I asked for clarification and of course, she couldn't give me a straight answer. She simply said that her first impression of me was that I was a person she wouldn't know how to understand. I guess I had to take it as a sort-of compliment since she wasn't talking to me in a demeaning manner.

Over the years, I tend to shut people out. It's usually when I realize that the 'gig is up' and the realities of the situation set in. I'm not here to be someone's punching bag. I'm not here to satisfy someone else's need to 'fix' something or figure out. Typically when I lay all my feelings out on the line, they get reduced to nothing, as if they are a piecemeal object like buffalo wings and butter croissants at a wedding banquet. I'm not a person that thrives off of someone telling me how I should or shouldn't be or tries to change me as if I'm some sort of monster.

Maybe it's just dumb luck, but one of the shittiest feelings is when I decide to force myself to be 'myself' and someone takes it the wrong way. I've opened myself up to others and they have a hard time reading me. A lot of times, they back away from me. I'm actually OK with that, because I understand that I can't make someone else feel a certain way about me. I also have no right to impose myself on their life if they don't want it.

The same works the other way. If I don't want someone in my life, for whatever reason, I expect some consideration and respect. My openness and candidness is not a unique treatment I want to save for one special person in my life.

I'm a few days away from getting a restraining order on someone because I'm not acting a certain way with myself. Think of 'Rose' from Two and a Half Men. Except I don't live in Malibu and make a lot of money. Some of my best friends understand that if I don't talk for a week, month or even year that nothing changes in the friendship. We all have our own lives. Seems that other people don't think that way. Knowing someone for two weeks and you don't talk for a few days does not entitle them to a ratio of 102:11 text messages among inundations of calls and threats of 'bad things.'

I've come to the conclusion that I don't owe anybody any explanation as to who I am or who I choose to be.

Maybe I need a different outlet for being who I am as a person. Like art. I used to be able to draw a mean bird back in the day.