Surreptitious

I like to think that every one that means something to me knows. The reality is: that's not nearly true.

I live my life surreptitiously. Everyone knows the book worm whose quirky and does strange thing, changes subjects smoothly but noticeably. They know the writer and and musician who smile is always a little too wide. But of all these people who I would sit with daily, laughing and whining about high school, only one of them knew i was never paying any attention a single word any one said.

Crowds are hard for me. I feel what everyone is feeling. I can feel a secret about to burst from some one's lips. The dying need to let something go. Everything. If I'm not too careful or focused, I feel everything because the longer and more I intimately I know someone, the harder it is not to steal little pieces of them without their permission. I don't want them believe me. But, Melissa, Melissa stops people from paying too much attention to the way my eyes glaze over from the strain of my dual reality. She answers questions I obviously didn't catch and I rest with my head in her lap, pretending to be annoyingly detached from everyone.

I've had... unpleasant experiences after telling people. Some take it hard, and I regret it instantly because I know we'll never speak again. One was so excited my heart soared, but then she began to obviously see me as a "what" and not a "who" and it became difficult to be near her at all. I wish I could tell people that matter most to me. It's only fair that they bare their souls to me on purpose that i do the same. They will never really know me, but it's a precaution that I have to take.

My writing mentor, a woman i meet with regularly who helps my writing along, she wants me to journal, just to see what usable personal writing prompts I produce. But I can't so that. I can't spill my secrets for her to see in the bright afternoon light of whatever coffee shop she wants to test out. I need her see me as a WHO not a WHAT. And while I don't plan on telling her, I also refuse to make elaborate lies, like writing fake journals, because that may be even worse than all the truth withholding in the first place.

The people I love, the people who I would lay down in traffic for, they don't know me. If they did my raging, loud, energetic circle of friends, would be a lot smaller. I guarantee it.