It is what it is

I wonder often if other people think the way I do.  I feel like so much of what goes on in my head is unique to me.  But it isn't.  That's an easy thing to forget.

Once in a while, I get to have a truly personal conversation with somebody, or read something they've written in stream-of-consciousness style (not my favorite form of writing, but informative sometimes), and I realize how I'm really not that different from other people. 

So many of us suffer inside from feelings of loneliness, inadequacy, or failure.  So many of us live with regular feelings of fear, confusion, and unrest.  So many of us find that in our most triumphant moments, there's no way that's quite right to share it with anybody else.

TOO many of us go through life pretending.  We pretend to be happy.  We pretend to want to do this or that.  We pretend we like people we don't.  Sometimes we pretend to not like people we do.  We pretend so much that we run the risk of becoming the person we pretend to be.

I only know a couple really interesting people.  They're so interesting because they pretend less than any of the other people I know.  They stopped pretending long enough for me to get to know the real them.  The them that is silly and afraid, but not afraid to be silly.  The real them that has doubts and flaws, but also joys and ambitions.  These people have the best friends, and the most, because the people who stay with them are the ones who love them for their realness.

Somebody I work with is constantly introducing his statements with "I'm gonna be real with you."  I wish he wouldn't.  I would rather think that he was always being real with me, and that the idea of not being real didn't even cross his mind.  But instead, his every assurance of reality makes me doubt its existence even more.

I'm not sure that this post had an overall point.  I'm not even sure if it had that many little points within it.  I started writing it with no topic in mind, but only some vague feelings about a few things I just read online, from both friends and strangers.  Perhaps I'll revisit this later and try to make sense of it.  For now, it is what it is.

Nostalgia

Nostalgia is a funny thing.  It takes me over at some of the oddest moments.  And the things I become nostalgic about are so varied.  Former girlfriends.  Classes.  Activities from my youth.  Smells.  Turns of phrase.  Sometimes I'm not even sure what I'm nostalgic about.  I just get a feeling like things used to be wonderful, more wonderful than now, and that their wonderfulness is woefully lost.  None of it makes sense to me, and I kick myself for being silly, but nonetheless, the feeling is there.

I think the worst nostalgia is the kind that causes self-doubt.  As I read the marriage notice of a friend of mine, I thought about my own (current lack of a) romantic life, and I found myself remembering back to a relationship I had in college.  I ended that relationship because it got more serious than I was ready for it to be, but I have to wonder, what if I had done things differently?  Would my old friends be reading my marriage notice?  Would I be somehow happier than I am now?  What drastically different course might my life have taken?  Although I think the decision I made at the time was the right one, and what would have inevitably happened one way or another, I know I didn't go about expressing it the right way.  My social sensitivities have never been acclaimed as exquisite, and honestly, my (generally inadvertent) bluntness probably has amounted to meanness on several occasions.  So here I sit, in the grip of a nostalgia I find it difficult to control.  Illogically and without any decisive reason, I want a chance to make a different decision than the one I made, even though I don't think I could change the outcome for any better than it was.  At least maybe in the future I can recognize my own insensitivity and avoid a similar incident.  Maybe.