By the fear that love's too much

What is it with me and sharing everything?

While I don't want to spread details of intimate interactions with people I care about (especially since this is something I've done in the past only to the detriment of my relationships with those people), because I think it's an important issue that needs to be addressed, I figured I'd write about it tonight simply as an issue of my own. Just me. No one else.

This issue involves other people, of course. The very act of sharing your thoughts means that there are people on the receiving end. This isn't a tree falling in a forest with no one to hear it. This tree has friends and family and other people surrounding her who occasionally deign to listen to her speak or read what she writes. They submit to being showered in the nonsense.

But I'm not going to try and analyze them. Because tonight it's all about ripping myself apart a bit.

I guess I do that every night. But tonight especially.

The truth - and the point of this blog - is that I spill my guts all too often. Even before anyone asks, I'm always quick to start telling them details about my experiences, about myself.

I've always said that this was my way of gaining catharsis. Or that it's how I am best able to help people. Empathy is the sincerest form of advice, I tend to believe. But sometimes it can appear as though all I'm doing is wallowing, fantasizing, considering myself and not the world around me.

It's not my intention, but when I spend at least 20 minutes to an hour writing my thoughts out and sharing them with the world, it starts to make me think I'm entitled to say how I feel whenever I deem fit.

In some situations this is acceptable. I can tell my best friends, my father, some of my relatives about the goings-on in my life without any worry of consequences. But there are some situations when it's not appropriate to say whatever is on your mind without the proper filter. For example, if someone were to make a casual comment in conversation with me, it might not be appropriate to respond with a lengthy anecdote about getting my wisdom teeth out or having my mom die when I was 15.

As someone who is interested in the lives of others, I welcome these kinds of stories. I like having people confide in me so I can create a compendium of knowledge about them within the recesses of my brain. It makes me feel closer to them. But there's nothing wrong with not enjoying being on the receiving end of melodramatic stories.

Yet sometimes I forget that not everyone wants to know about all the drama that has transpired during my life. Maybe I should keep it to myself occasionally.

I guess that's the point of having this little thingy to write in every night. If anyone doesn't care to hear my story, doesn't want to provide support or feedback, then they don't have to. It's just a place where I can vent and where anyone and everyone has the opportunity (but definitely not the responsibility) to become a listener. But only if they want to. Which is certainly not a requirement. In any sense.

So essentially I wear my heart on my sleeve. And my heart has many bumps and bruises on it from years of wear and tear, times when I've had to reassess my life on account of bad decisions, unlucky circumstances, or whatever else.

The title of this blog comes from a poem I wrote a long time ago when I thought I was falling in love with someone. Without sharing too much, I'll say that this was even before I had my first boyfriend. That leaves the issue open to much interpretation, and be aware that even if you ask you will never get a straight answer from me as to who it was for (even the person it was written for never found out).

Anyway.

At that time I realized what an insane idea it was to share those passionate feelings with someone who I didn't even know all that well. It wasn't that I was falling in love with someone I'd never met, but that in reality I couldn't reasonably trust them with a token of my brooding thoughts on love and relationships.

Even now, I feel like that poem was one of the most personal pieces I've ever written. And while I can feel detached from it now, back when it was written it would've been wrong to share it with someone who couldn't understand the magnitude of the emotions held within its words.

And that's how I feel about my thoughts in general. If they're not going to be understood properly and thoroughly, then maybe it's better if they're not understood at all.

Still, I devote myself to writing this every night with the hope that someone somewhere, even if it's just my dad, cares to read it and think about what I've said. And maybe try and give me feedback, hopefully constructive.

Because I recognize that not everyone wants or cares to listen to anything I have to say. And that when I share my anecdotes, maybe they're not worth listening to by some estimation. So it makes me so much more thankful to have anyone in the world who actually cares about my words and my thoughts and my problems and neuroses.

I realize that I wear my heart on my sleeve. And sometimes I'm just glad that there are people out there who treat it with kindness.