I wish I knew what it felt like to get excited about Halloween.
For as long as I can remember, I’ve just never been that excited about costumes. I suppose I’m too self-conscious to be comfortable pretending I’m something that I’m not. At least if I’m in a theatre production there’s a point to it…there’s a reason. Arguably, there is for Halloween as well, but I just have trouble getting over it.
And what’s odd is that I appreciate other people’s efforts to come up with costumes…I enjoy the excitement that they have over the holiday. I just can’t feel it for myself.
Two of my best friends get very excited about it. With one of them, it makes sense since she’s heavily involved in theatre. With the other, it’s kinda strange; every year he spares no expense to come up with a creepy and unusual costume. He loves doing it, but you won’t catch him acting in a play or anything like that.
I suppose it’s just another thing that makes me feel slightly out of sync with the world around me.
Gonna shift gears here.
This site has lost something over the past few years. More accurately, I’ve lost something.
My freedom of speech.
Once upon a time, I wrote whatever I wanted to write on Scatterthought, without caring who read it or how they’d react to it. I justified that in the belief that I was writing for myself, and anyone else was welcome to read it or skip by it as they chose.
I don’t do that anymore. I’ve become too concerned with what I portray in Scatterthought. It’s still a reflection of how I see the world, but it lacks emotional relevance. When I read back over this in years to come, will I know how I really and truly felt at a point in time?
No, I don’t think I will. For the most part, I’ve hidden my emotions from the Scatterthought audience. Perhaps because I don’t want people to be concerned about me when there are much more pressing matters to deal with in this world.
Perhaps because I don’t want to show weakness.
Perhaps because I don’t want to appear flawed.
Perhaps because I don’t want to be vulnerable.
Perhaps because I don’t want to be pitied.
That’s all well and good, but is it real? No, not really. It’s not fake, but it’s not complete. I’ve never lied in this space, and I never will. Why do that, when I can simply omit details or refrain from posting? For this reason, Scatterthought is not nearly what it once was.
And I want to get that back.
The question is, what do I have to give up in exchange? Will people respect me less because I’m flawed, or will they respect me more for admitting those flaws? More importantly, should it matter what people think? The answer here, of course, is that it should not matter. The corollary is that it does matter.
In person, I can exercise some control over what people think of me. But I’ve employed the written word long enough to know that interpretation lies in the predisposition of the reader. What I write may not be what a Scatterthought reader thinks I mean.
Some people have private and public sections to their online journals, so that they can control who sees the really personal stuff. I could do that, but I don’t see the point. If I can’t be who I am with everyone, then I can’t be myself.
Have I talked like this before? I think I have. I think this happens every once in awhile, with me feeling like Scatterthought is no longer living up to its potential. I wax poetic for awhile, talk about what I’m really feeling, then eventually lapse back into the same old thing. So, I apologize is this cycle is tiring or boring to you.
That said, let’s be completely forthcoming, at least for a minute. I can’t promise it will last.
I am, at this moment in time, not enjoying my life.
I’m always tired. I’ve always got things to do. I rarely have motivation to do them. I’m not keeping up.
I’m overworked both in and out of the office.
I’m on the verge of letting people down, the mere thought of which I absolutely detest.
I haven’t had a meaningful relationship in almost two years. And when I’m attracted to or date someone, I wonder if it’s genuine or if I’m just feeling lonely.
I’ve come to believe that if I’m going to be everyone’s ultra-dependable rock, I can’t exhibit even a hint of weakness or unhappiness. So I keep that tucked away from all but a select few people. And when I do talk about a weakness, I always act like it’s not a problem because I know of it, or speak as if I have a solution.
My perspective on the world prevents me from complaining about my life, when there are so many worse things going on around me. I would hate for someone to think I consider my problems worse than what you read on the front page of the newspaper, even though I’ve rarely thought that other people are doing that. It stands to reason that if I don’t feel that way about them, they won’t feel it about me.
In order to meet the standard I’ve set for myself over the past four years, I’ve compromised my ability to be myself.
I’ve struggled in recent times to keep it in.
And now I’m struggling to let it out.
What it comes to is this.
I know myself very well in terms of morals, responsibilities, and skills.
But I don’t have a clue as to who I am emotionally.
Solve that problem, and maybe I’ll know what it feels like to be excited about Halloween.
