Exposing Myself

I've been told that I'm good at bottling up and disguising my feelings. Up until recently I've been taking these words as complements instead of flashing warning signs that I am doing something insidious to my mental and emotional health. For as far back as I could remember, I have been the counselor figure among my friends - listening to all their qualms with the world and offering my two cents on the matter. But instead of taking my own advice and exposing my true emotions and thoughts on issues, I've grown accustomed to hiding them and piling them up in the basement of my mind: only to have them suddenly burst out, begging to be seen by the people lingering around the door but not taking the first step to see what is in the dark, ominous basement.

I haven't been able to expose myself to many people. I haven't been able to show them my true self - the one that isn't happy all the time and is actually quite negative about a number of things. Is it because of pressure I feel in my community to be the bright, jubilant one? Is it because I want to be the constantly happy, bubbly friend who is always there to bring people up when they are in their worst states? Is it because I think exposing myself means failure and vulnerability? Perhaps. But is that all really bad? I wonder if vulnerability is something to be avoided or embraced: I'd like to think it's our job to embrace it for its rawness and its demonstration of true human nature.

Exposing myself isn't difficult - to a certain extent. I tend to censor and to polish my words so that I don't show my genuine thoughts and feelings to those around me because I don't want to burden them with me. As you get to know me, I have more layers that I don't even know all of them - heck, I don't think I even know half of them. Let's start off with a couple, shall we?

I... am easily hurt. Am bad at relationships. Blush easily. Am transparent. Am a perfectionist. Am scared of betrayal. Trust easily. Fall easily. Get back up eventually. Cry too easily. Am determined. Am open when necessary. Am afraid of commitment. Blame myself. Easily guilted. Often seen laughing or smiling. Am generally genuinely happy. Still get upset at the little things. Focus on the little things. See the little things as the most important things.

But those aren't all.

I am all of that and more. But I don't think I've been able to expose myself as much as I would like to my loved ones and the people who sincerely care about me. As I said in my list, I'm afraid of commitment and to me, exposing myself is a large part of that because I am commiting my secrets and my identity to someone I am supposed to trust for a long time. I don't know why I began to bottle up my feelings and my thoughts after a while; maybe it's because I found it easier to listen than to try to explain the mechanics of my thought process and the consequential perspectives and hypotheses regarding myself and my ideas.

But for now, we'll end it at here: it's both late & I think I've exposed enough for one blog post.