comfortable in my company . . .

I used to wonder if i could sit down with anyone for dinner might i choose to sit down with myself, face to face, looking from the outside in like so many friends and lovers have done before. What could i learn from myself if i turned me around and looked in my own eyes (or would i look away) and listen to the answers of my own questions? What if i asked myself to tell me a story, which one would it be? What if i didn't like what i heard? what if i told a joke and i didn't laugh? Could i enjoy my own company, could we be friends? i suppose the answer is no. Though at home in my own skin I'm not sure i could be comfortable in my own company for very long. We've been spending quite a bit of time together lately, me and my company, and it's not as i had hoped.

My skin hides my unease from the sight of others like a cloak. my conflict is internal, not meant for public display or discussion. Every so often a little bit is allowed to escape and i do my best to retrieve it before too much is revealed. Some times it escapes as a text message or a mistimed advance and i'm forced to retreat in apology, other times I hope that crowded conversation means nobody has heard. Not one to wear my heart on my sleeve i stuff everything up inside them instead, like an old magician who, having lost interest in doing tricks, has packed away his entire show until a later time and place when he might find the right audience and reinvent his act as something new. My own audience didn't leave so much as i turned it away; or, more truthfully, i turned her away. And though she didn't want to leave i hope in time she understands that she doesn't need my tricks and she doesn't want a magician. All they have to offer is a show: an illusion created to distort, to bend perception, to elicit belief in something that isn't there. More smoke and mirrors, the tools of a liar, concealing a lie.

Alone and upset, ashamed and disappointed , I remind myself that the illusion didn't end with her, i tricked myself too. tricked myself in to believing happiness existed where it didn't, that somehow with the change of the season or a new activity to pursue together I'd realize everything i ever wanted was right next to me. It wasn't, and it never could be, and this truth is a lonely one. perhaps that's why i kept it hidden for so long, preferring instead to create a comfortable dishonesty between us both. Preferring to care only about myself. So no more magic shows. I've been in the audience when the performance ends and curtain closes, and I've been up on stage behind it after the crowd shuffles away and the lights go out. In the end both feel numbly the same.

I wish i could have written something a little bit brighter, but it's raining out today, and this is what happens when you push people away and keep too much company with yourself.