epiphanies you already had

[angrydwarf]

The problem is passivity. I have been a passenger on the spaceship of my life for 33 years. To use a Hardwick metaphor, I'm on the ghost ship. Without getting too far up the rabbit's asshole as to reasons-why and like that, basically I have never really shared myself with another person. I don't just mean romantically, i mean interpersonally all the way round the whole thing, always. I have been the bluff, sarcastic, cute, obnoxious, surface-y guy, because I have been terrified of what really being myself means. Family structures are really scary to me. My own doesn't really makes sense, and my place in it stalled out when I was about sixteen. In terms of Vanessa..........she is the closest I have ever come to really being my genuine self with another person. We had a fight today and she locked me on the porch, so I sat in the sun and I meditated for awhile, doing Alan Watts breathing excercises and trying to figure out what the fuck is going on. Living with the Azbills since May has been a trial, because I really do not feel like I belong, but also because I don't really make an effort to belong. This translates to a lot of externalizing and sarcasm and....snail-behavior, basically. But, I came to realize today that, as cheesy as it sounds, there's like this tiny room at the back of the back of my soul, and inside this room is where I keep my feelings about Vanessa, the things language doesn't exist to describe or explain. It is pure light there, blinding and ultimate, and that's why I'm here, going through all this, because of this beautiful, flawed, effortful, effortless person. I have chosen to disengage out of safety. Nobody wants to hear what I think, so I won't say it. It isn't worth it anyway. And so....the question now becomes, because of the purity-of-feeling that Vanessa inspires in me, the need to be better at being alive, how do I flip the switch without hurting myself, or at least minimizing the damage? Because I feel like disengagement has been extrordinarily hurtful. I don't know how to talk to people in ways that aren't Simpsons quotes, or movie trivia, or mutually appreciated band-lyrics. I want to do this. Is there a class to take in personhood?

How do I open the door and let the light out, and still feel safe?