Ego.

Sometimes, I give in to the nature of the human condition, battling against a feeling of persistent inconsequence. You know, that insurmountable fear of contributing nothing, of impacting no one. It's in these periods of time, be it hours, days, maybe weeks, that I find myself exercising self reflection in the most dangerous quantities. And now that there's someone in my life who has made the mistake of providing audience to such shameless displays, I fear it's become worse. Before, I let such vainglorious reflections sift harmlessly inside my head until I was either able to do something to combat the inadequacy or one day what was once persistent was only nagging and then finally fleeting.

I'm beginning to believe that maybe some thoughts are meant to be internalized, ignored and buried deeply because after I've released it all I feel a certain shame, a kind of uncomfortable nakedness. It's like claiming my piece of humanity is somehow dangerous, exposing me to some horrific vulnerability. Of course this only leads to more self reflection where I start attempting to pinpoint traumatic and formative moments in my life that would cause me to feel this way. The pervasiveness of popular psychology and our apparent need to diagnose and treat every minor disturbance makes it all that much easier to talk myself into a deeper hole inside my head.

All I know is it makes me uncomfortable. Sometimes, I'll find myself laying next to him, usually experiencing a mild to severe hangover and things just fall out of my mouth, revelations that I have never verbalized. It's so conflicting, part of me feels relieved that I could manage to trust someone in this way and the other part is terrified that I could expose myself in that way yet also embarrassed to have burdened someone else with it all. And it would seem by having shared the inner workings of my brain it has given him license to comment upon them and confront me with my less than savory personality traits. It's not that I think I'm alone in the way I feel or that I think other people live in a state of unquestioning bliss, it's just that I've always failed to admit to any of it. The most disturbing part is that I'm sure anyone who has known me well enough was surely not deluded by my maintenance of the facade of a perfectly content human, it's just that no one has ever had the guts to call me on it.

I can't help but expect that he will decide to hate me for it, either the insistence of being deluded or the fact that I'm actually human. Every time we part ways I can't help but wonder if he'll ever talk to me again, unable to understand how he can tolerate me for I myself sometimes wish I could crawl out of my skin and run away.