Nina Does Emotional

This post should come with a little health warning and apologies in advance. It's a lot more personal and stuff, so if you don't want to hear about my personal stuff I would suggest you skip along to the next post.

Ok, so up until now all my posts have been quite light hearted and witty and stuff, but this is my blog after all, and the whole reason I started a blog in the first place all those years ago was because it was a place where I could store my feelings and speak my mind openly without caring what others thought about it, I guess it's a little harder to do that nowadays with all the people I know who read this so I apologise in advance for showcasing the inner workings on my mind. And for those of you who ask why I've chosen to put this put there so openly, well usually I reserve stuff like this for my Tumblr, but for this I felt it was easier to write here.

As a person in general I tend to keep to myself a lot. I'm not saying I avoid social interaction because that's untrue, I love being sociable, there's nothing better than catching up with friends. What I do have an issue with though is sharing my personal life and emotions. It has been said many times that I rarely smile or I'm hard to read, and it's all true. I don't like to give anything away because I'm afraid it would be seen as a sign of weakness. As you can imagine it has caused a few problems with friends who don't know if they're coming or going with me, or they don't know what I'm about, and that inevitably brings up trust issues, as how can you trust somebody if you don't know who they really are. I don't really know how long I've done it for, but for most people I put on this persona of being cold, hard, unapproachable and unfeeling. To me it's a way to mask my emotion, so even though it's all there underneath, I prefer to keep control and never to let it show.  

But obviously everyone needs an emotional outlet, even somebody dubbed the "ice maiden". You know that one friend we all have who basically acts as our therapist or conscience whether we need it or not, and we can tell them absolutely anything and know we can trust them? Well I have one of those, I met her 4/5 years ago and she is an absolutely sweetheart. In fact, she's probably one of the nicest friends I have and to be honest you don't get much higher praise from me than that. But lovely or not, to this day she remains one of the few people who can give me a slap on the wrist or sit me down for a brutally honest talk and say it how it is and completely get away with it. It's actually quite funny really because even when I start talking to her just intending to have a light hearted conversation with her, we always end up getting deep and meaningful no matter what.

Well anyway, I took a break from studying yesterday and met my friend in town for a bit. As always the talk inevitably turned deeply serious after a while, and while I usually shy away from it, for her I do try and go with it, even if it means mumbling my responses while avoiding her gaze. I have this thing about looking people in the eye when talking seriously, I just can't do it. They do say the eyes are the way to look into the soul and I prefer guarding mine with a high barbed wire fence with guard dogs patrolling the perimeter. But back to the story, so eventually we hit on the trust issue along with a number of other things, and it really got me thinking. I wasn't able to say everything I wanted to say to her face, partly because I was too embarrassed and partly because when I'm put on the spot I tend to forget most of what I want to say, so I'm using this post as my chance to start saying the stuff I wanted to say to her.

I think that talk yesterday was probably the most open I ever had with her. It isn't the first time she's given me much to think about, but yesterday really opened my eyes to see how much I needed to sort my stuff out and face up to this whole issue of trust and openness and honesty etc. It didn't surprise me when she said she found it hard to see what I was about because even with the stuff I tell her I do leave bits out or hold back (my best friend says I have the ability of saying everything and nothing at the same time) because I'm afraid of saying everything and then having to entrust that person with my secret when I don't even trust myself with it. What did surprise me though is how understanding she was, even though I knew she wanted answers and was getting a little impatient. It made me realise how unfair and selfish I was being by messing her around the way I was, and her saying she would try and help me if she could after all she'd already done for me just broke right through my emotional defences. Whenever I leave our conversations I always think long and hard, but this time it felt like so much more than that. I openly admit it was the first time I came home and cried after talking to her, and a tear or 2 may have even be shed during (also a first for her) but I will always maintain that was hay fever to anyone who saw. The hardest thing was when she said there were things about me that I never spoke of that I ought to, and she was left baffled as to why I never speak about them. I wanted nothing more than to tell her exactly why but instead I stayed quiet and said nothing. The truth is, certain topics to me are taboo, it's not that I don't think of them often because I do, there are some days when I think about them so often it hurts, and that's why I never speak of them. There's truth in what people say about the truth hurting, and sometimes the pain is so bad it can feel like a knife being twisted in my gut, so I rationalise it's better to bury my head in the sand and pretend all is well.

As well as this we also spent a long time talking about forgiveness. A big reason why I don't like telling people stuff about me is because I'm quite shallow and vain, and I really care about what others think of me, even if I give off the impression I couldn't care less. I can just predict the things people would say to me or how much they'd judge me if they knew what I was really all about, yet my friend repeatedly tried to get through to me that as a Christian if I couldn't get ahold of the concept of forgiveness, I must be suffering from something I think she called a "heart problem". And that also made me think a lot, because obviously Christians are all about forgiveness, because they have a God who has already forgiven them for every wrong thing they've ever done, and that's pretty amazing, so why am I so concerned about them judging me? It's ironic in a way that it's Christians I worry about judging me the most, I feel like there's this expectation I have to live up to, and failing to do so will make them think I'm weak. It's actually so stupid of me to think that when I look at it like that way. After all, it is always my Christian friends who have been there to pick me up when I've fallen in the past. 

So, I know I've rambled throughout this whole post, but I think what I'm trying to say is I realise now that pretending something never happened or having a persona isn't ever the answer to my problems. If anything it's an easy way to alienate people and make it hard for them to trust me if they don't know the real me. I've done it for so long now though that whenever I think about stripping it all back to emotional me I panic and assume somebody will use it against me and try to hurt me, but that's a mentality I need to snap out of fast. As for my friend, well even though I trust her without question I'm afraid of letting her down. When I met her she was a stranger who I entrusted with the things I didn't want anyone to know about me, the things I am quite frankly ashamed of, and because she was a stranger I felt I could be so open, yet now I've got to know her I have so much love and respect for her, and while that's great it also means telling her stuff has got that little bit harder as I don't want to disappoint her like I know I do, or anyone else for that matter. But now that I think about it, that's pretty stupid. If anything I could be doing more harm than good by doing that, and it probably hurts her more knowing I'm giving her half the story than being open and honest with her. I think eventually I'll be able to tell her everything she wants to know rather than just bits and pieces, but I get the feeling it's going to take some time to build up to that and I can only hope she has the patience of a saint in the meantime. So, I have resolved that I need to make a big effort to sort out these issues of mine and be completely honest with people, no matter how scared I am of the outcome.

I guess that kinda brings this post to a close, in my head it feels like all my thoughts have been jumbled up, but writing it all out here may not have given me any illuminating conclusions but it makes more sense seeing it laid out like this. Part of me hopes I have the courage to show my friend this, but as I said in the beginning, this is the place where all my emotions go, I guess it's a little like the Room of Requirement in Hogwarts. The place where all things are hidden.