Those Weak of Heart and Mind, Stop Here

Hi,

For some reason, many of the friends I have made in the past five years do not know me. They may think they know me, I may even think they know me, but they don't. I am not sure why. I just haven't been keen on opening myself up to people. I hang out immensely with these people, and we have lots of great and memorable times together, but I find that my entire personality is just what they have physically observed of me. People don't really know my past, what my life is like (other than school/improv), what my relationship with Lindsey is like.

Here is an example that surprised even me: A few months ago I was sitting and eating with a couple of friends who I had known for a good 2 or 3 years. They were particularly good friends who I hung out with on many many occasions. While sitting with them, it became apparent that they really knew almost nothing about my Workshop experience. It was a big realization that they knew nothing of the program, my experiences, or my stories of a year of my life that was probably the single most formative time of my life.

I don't talk to people about my feelings, I hide when I am sad, I try to only put on a neutral to happy face. Maybe a lesson I've learned is that no one likes an unhappy person. When someone asks if I'm OK, I will almost always say fine or good or great, no matter how I feel. I don't believe that people really want to hear anything else.

This is a weird lesson to have learned. I'd like to believe I've learned otherwise, because its not the healthiest outlook to have. I've been through so much sadness in my life. I've experienced intense periods of depression, moments of despair where I was ready and willing to end it all. I learned to beat a lot of those feelings by embracing sadness as a normal feeling (if its OK to be happy, why shouldn't it be OK to be sad?), by talking about how I feel, and by realizing that life is precious. I always give advice to other people to be open and honest with themselves and others. I quote a book I once read (The Prophet, by Kahlil Gibrian) and tell people that we can only be filled with joy as deep as sorrow cuts into us. I am pretty well versed on how to be open about feelings.

In high school, I was perpetually alone and unhappy. But that's high school, right? So then I went on Workshop. I was always around a really great (at times) group of people. We were constantly open with each other, we shared deep things...I met the most important person in my life. I grew, I learned things about myself, I confronted my parents about deeply disliking them, I learned to love again, I made close friends that wil certainly last a lifetime, I became a new and improved Gil. My whole 18 years before that year were all just a long trail of shit that I could wipe away clean.

And yet, here I am, five years down the road, and I find myself hiding my true self. I show half myself. I show almost nothing to anybody. I don't let people in. Sometimes I don't even know if I'm in anymore.

Why is that? Even my great friends from Workshop have grown distant. I hardly talk to them, and when I do its never like it was back then, its the same as it is with anyone else. I've dabbled in opening up a little to people with mixed results. Sometimes I can feel that another person wants me to tell them more, but I still avoid it.

I am feeling number and number. Something needs to change. I need to start feeling again.