Darling's for the Puppies, Love.

I'm going to write a blog post on everything I've been doing as of late tomorrow, but I just realized something about myself I've never thought about before and I just thought I'd share.

So, fairly recently I realized I overshare a lot in new relationships with people. When I meet someone, I jump in rather quickly to talking about various aspects of my life that would usually take months to address casually. Also, a few months ago, Emily and I were talking and she brought up that a few people that I knew quite a bit about because I'm a chronic listener felt like I knew more about them than they knew about me, and it's true. And these were people that I spent copious amounts of time with and consider close friends. It's not that I actively don't talk, it's just I talk a lot about the same things.

What I just realized, though, is that when I'm over-sharing I'm basically trying to steer the conversation. I will tell someone anything and everything about me I'm comfortable sharing if that means they won't have the opportunity to ask me about the things I'm not comfortable with. It's this strange paradigm where if I can get in as much as I can about my cats, we'll be forced to talk about my cats. Now, I'm not actively trying to keep people away from what I keep hidden, but if something gets too close I get agitated and paranoid. I'm a rather shy person (some might say cripplingly so), but with people I feel that I might have to deal with for long stretches of time, I spew. With short term relationships, like cashiers, I still have to whisper to my mom what I want. But that's not the point.

I'm just thinking about when we did those charcoal drawings and how Luke kept asking Megan about hers and how terrified that made me. I still have my drawing. I know what it means, and I don't want to tell anyone, because I honestly feel like I know everyone has misconstrued it. It wasn't about anxiety or stress or anything like that. Matt made a joke about it being like a Georgia O'Keefe, it wasn't. It might seem like I give a lot away, and I especially think that if people were to read a lot of the posts I have up here they would definitely come to that conclusion. But, I don't feel like I do.

I feel like I've paid a price. That I'm willing to give up all that I have on here and to basic strangers in order to keep the deepest parts of me sacred. Not to my parents, not to my therapists, not to my closest friends who I've told the most. I think everyone has those moments where they think "you think you know me, but you don't", but I think it reaches deeper for me. I don't let people know me. I don't want to be known.