So if you all haven’t figured it out, there’s some big stuff goin’ down round the ol’ octopus niche these days.  Stuff that requires a kind of emotional fortitude I aspire to but often lack.  Except when I out and out lose it — or decide to post about it to the world wide web —  I tend to hide my

crazyangrysadoverwhelmeddrownednuttyfuckofaself

fairly well behind a thick as hell wall of ersatz wit.  

I say fairly well because I suspect that anyone who actually knows me can probably see through me like I’m a gauzy curtain and they are empowered with x-ray vision so who cares if there’s a curtain there anyway.  I figured out recently that more than hiding behind a wall of wannabe humour and punchy pontificating, I hide behind other people and other people’s lives.  

This would be the eight-legged train of thought:

My life is

hellchaosstaringdownthebarrelof(atleastanewkindof)lifelong
solitudeandjumpingallthewhilescreaminginfear

so I’m going to spend a lot of time thinking about other people’s lives because at least their challenges and ideas are new and interesting and I might stand even the vaguest foggiest hail mary pass in the shot in the dark chance of offering something useful to someone else cuz clearly things are wayhayhaaaaay too messy around here for me to be of any use to myself.

I’m suddenly full of ideas.  For other people.
I’m suddenly full of energy.  For other people.
I’m suddenly full of more shit than usual
but that doesn’t mean the ideas and energy
aren’t good.
Aren’t valuable.

And the thing is I’m nothing if not

ludicrousloyalovingdevotedpassionate

about the people I care about. So, when I hide behind them and their lives — or try to — I do it with gusto. I do it with painstaking attention to detail. I do it with all my resources plus ones I don’t even know I have. I’ll use my cat if I have to. I’ll do star jumps if I have to.

The thing is, this kind of

madasahattergoldenretrieverlikedumbgenerouskindcommittment

is partly how I got in this mess in the first place. Cuz, if you give that kind of energy longterm to what could at times be described as a vacuum, it just sucks.

(And yes, I meant that fucking pun so deal).

So, I’m trying to stop. I’m trying to stop hiding behind other people. You’d think that trying NOT to hide oneself would make one less lonely as a result of being more visible. It doesn’t. Hiding is simply the best possible way of telling yourself that the reason no one sees you is your choice not theirs…

Sometimes I think, as I wrote about in my Secretary post (which was, by the way, the anniversary post for this blog. Insert appropriate fanfare — perhaps a kazoo playing Vita Nostra from The Mission and one of those sparklers that doesn’t light but you keep trying until you burn your fingers?) that I just need to find a mate who honestly doesn’t mind my hiding behind them – who enjoys the

madasahattergoldenretrieverlikedumbgenerouskindcommittment

full of ideas. full of energy.

and who actively enjoys engaging with me when I get like that. Who values the nutty. Who values the spilling all over myself crazy with thoughts that don’t stop or slow down except when unconscious and even then I’ve sure had some dreams in my day I can tell ya’.. man… WOO… Anyway!

Maybe, I think, I just need to find someone who knows how to run with my bull.

(Yup, I meant that one too.)

So I don’t feel quite so nutty. So I don’t feel quite so crazy and overthetopallthefuckingtime because I can come home to a big bad gorgeous kind of trulysafeandlovedandunderstood.

Then I think as I am ensconced in my

hellchaosstaringdownthebarrelof(atleastanewkindof)lifelong
solitudeandjumpingallthewhilescreaminginfear

that I might never find (oddsareIwon’tgiventhereclusiveness) that person so perhaps I just need to tie myself to the naked empty centre of my life all alone and fight the good fight without my familiar shields. Maybe I need new shields? Maybe I need to just let people find me and my energy and my ideas if and when they want to and bother to look?

Some people might simplify all of this and try to call it “playing hard-to-get” and who knows if there would be merit to the assertion or not. What the fuck to do I know? I’m the idiot in the mess who’d rather come to your house and help you clean shower grout than sit around here… But, a couple things seem clear: you cannot play “hard-to-get” when no one’s trying to get you though, having said that, in general it might not be a bad skill “technique” to learn if you’ve spent years and years mastering the art of hurling yourself headlong at Mach 10 into other people. In other words, it might be good for me to retreat. To let people try to get me instead of doing the lion’s shareroarenormousfang of the work for them and then catching myself wondering why they seem to expect it to always be that way… (The relevant saying here would be “Start as you mean to go on.”)

And then I am racked with a new fear. What if that new woman all alone at the centre of things just isn’t me anymore? I love hurling myself into other people’s lives and it’s not like I’m never welcome either. It’s just never worked out for me in love. I’ve yet to be met or anywhere near matched in love and that is what it is but part of my hurlyMach10 is just essential to who I am I think… Essential to why I pick up a pen and write is that I love people and ideas so much it actually hurts sometimes so it’s no wonder I’m scared ersatz witless by the idea of choosing to stop and hide myself in plain sight instead… Cuz what if no one ever finds me there? What if I give up the hurling and still never get to be who I am most hurlyhappy being and come home to someone whose happy with her too?

What if that new aloneatthecentre me doesn’t write anymore cuz she’s got nothing to write about? What if she runs out of energy? Ideas? More than being aloneforlife I think I fear wordlessness. Terrifying, unprecedented wordlessness. What if my hurlyMach10 hidebehindotherpeople is also my muse? What if all those people are my muses?

I can’t even write about this anymore. It’s just that scary.

Whatever. Wahn wahn wahn. The litter box needs tending to. And don’t even try to tell me I can’t hide behind my cat right now cuz if I don’t do this in baby steps I’ll probably have some sort of (furtherandmoreintense) breakdown.

Goodnight.