Open

'I know you take a million years to open up and get comfortable with someone, but when you do you're a good laugh!' strange how the most astute observations can come from relative strangers sometimes. I have a huge number of friendly acquaintances, people who will smile and say hi when they spot me in the street, people full of idle chat in the pub or at lunchtimes at work, but a much, much smaller circle of actual friends. and it's not their fault, it's mine. they're right there, I just have to reach out and... open up. I'm not sure I know how to do that. to go from 'chat when we happen to be around each other' to 'going and hanging out together' is a step I've never observed myself making, it's just happened with those very vanishingly rare few people I've clicked with from the outset. I love those precious few so fiercely, because being able to be around another person and just be myself is so hard normally. is that how it works? maybe I just don't click like that with most people, and that is how it is. but when I crave human contact, still a new and unsettling feeling for me, when those two or three people I clicked with are busy or far away, what do I do then?

You invited questions about yourself, and we discussed the power that one wields when demonstrating that they have nothing to hide or be ashamed or defensive of. It made me think.

What if you say that you're an open book and invite questions that you know you'll answer with lies, just because it's far easier than admitting that you have things to hide?

I hope that someday I'll find a reason to investigate you more thoroughly. I'm hesitant now, and I don't know why. I do know that it's sincere apprehension, though.

I suspect that you could become like the people that have taught me things about myself, whether deliberately or not. There's something about you, though, that's insufferably distracting. And the thought that I'm not able to hold your attention tears out my nerves with rusty, screaming claws.