truth seeker, secret keeper

Someone asked me a while back what I was passionate about.  I struggled to find an answer, I couldn't pin-point one thing that I thought: yes this makes my heart beat faster when I think about it! I found that profoundly disturbing.  Today, I think I have the beginnings of an answer.

It's weird to admit, because I consider myself a sort of misanthropist - but I think maybe people are my passion. But hold-up, not all people; 'authentic' people - this is where it begins and ends for me. I am awed by people who are open, honest, vulnerable - the kind of people who say "I don't give a fuck" and really mean it. Maybe these people excite me, because they represent who I want to be? Or perhaps it's because I've had my heart trampled on a few times, or maybe because in this world we're living, I simply see an opening - nay - a positive need for every day brave hearts. I simply love the people who trust me with their truths.

I'm not a talker, I never really have been. I find small talk excruciating, because I'm simply not much good at it, but I am always thrilled when someone reveals pieces of themselves to me. I mine those truths like the precious gemstone they are.

Sometimes I'll meet someone, catch their eye and know they are someone I would like to know more about. I'd like to think the appearance of a wicked set of sleeve tattoos and a manly, yet well groomed beard don't steer me too obviously to this conclusion - but hey, I'm only human. Sometimes the intuition and attraction lines gets a little blurry, I admit.

Anyway....

Sometimes upon meeting someone I just want to get right to it, I want their story, I want their heartache, I want to know what makes them tick.

If I could meet each and every one of you, I would ask you what you day-dream about? What you really want out of life? Where's your joy at? I'd ask you to tell me about your scars. And it's not voyeurism that drives me, I'm not a gossip, I'm not trying to tap you for ideas.  I see it as a gift - the act of listening, of receiving. When you ask someone about themselves, when you engage their heart, there is a palpable soul exchange - you leave marks on one another, like fingerprints. And if you believe in the idea that everyone you meet in your life serves a purpose, regardless of how long they stay, I think these are the exchanges that matter the most.

I hope this doesn't sound like a whole lot of wank. I've fallen out of practice of writing, and it is a vulnerability of my own to declare this, and put it out into the world.

"I would like to beg you, dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now.  Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer."  (Rainer Maria Rilke)

I'm also passionate about the idea of finding contentment.  My whole adult life, I have been plagued by the idea of finding answers - because surely life must be logical, and I have so many questions and doubts, that there simply must be answers.  I think soul-mining the people I encounter is my way of making peace with these questions, and also serves to remind me that perhaps the answers aren't so important?

secret sickness

They say that you're only as sick as your secrets.  I have a few in my closet - but there is just one making me really unwell right now.

And it is this:

I've never been anybody's girlfriend.

30 years on this Earth, and romantically, on my own that whole time.

I have literally been waiting my whole life to find someone to break through.

Try to imagine how much shame I feel just admitting that, and know I only do this, because here I am StrangeBird. And here I'm free to admit that I'm a mess, that I'm insecure and completely mortified. I get to leave this computer and this persona behind, but I always carry this secret with me - down the street, at work, around the dinner table, as I lay in the dark trying to get to sleep, and nobody knows how much it's stripping me, of self worth, hope, humor. It's a bit of a joke, except there's no punchline.

And this, this is why online dating is so completely mind-fucking to me. It was such a big decision to sign up - to think about chatting with people, talking about myself, 'selling' me, meeting up with someone in real life? Not liking them? Or worse, liking them? I have had to confront almost every fear about myself that I possess with this ridiculous ritual.

Some days, I can approach it with curiosity, and sometimes with humor.  But lately it just leaves me with an overwhelming sense of shit-ness.

I must be the problem... The almost-meet-up guy is now ignoring me, even after I wrote a vulnerable explanation and apology for being confusing.  At first it made me sad and bitter, but now it just kind of shits me off.  That even behind the protection of a computer screen, he hasn't got the balls to say the real reason why he lied about being "busy", or the guts to simply say "I don't want to talk to you anymore".

Seriously dude - WHAT. THE. FUCK?

Of course, he would have no idea that I angst-ed over troubling him for almost an entire weekend.  That I kicked myself for thinking too much, for panicking and knee-jerking.

Depending upon my level of confidence and ignited-wog-passion - I bounce from feeling violently rejected, angry, all the way to sunny indifference.  His loss, right?

I don't know what's so wrong with me?  I know I'm not perfect.  I'm not terribly pretty, I have curves in the wrong places, a mind-field of internal dialogue and edges.  Rough, obtrusive bumps on the exterior of my complicated package.  But I know, I know, inside there are parts that are pure gold. But nobody seems to want to scratch beneath the surface to see that.

Is it just a waiting game?  Is it timing? Do I just need for the right species of butterfly to flap its wings in the town of Shitsville, at a certain point of planetary alignment? Can I really be such an unusual case, that my time, place, person have to match up just so?

I don't know.  I prayed not to be lonely forever, and the next morning on the music lottery of my iPod, Bon Jovi told me it was my life, that it was now or never and then Shania Twain immediately followed by telling me that the thing about love is that there ain't no particular way. (Yes, I have these songs on my iPod... seems to be the post for hideous secrets).

You can listen to a song dozens of times, and never really 'hear' it. Maybe people are the same that way.