— The Atlas of Popephoenix

Day 091: Hi My Name Is…

Hi my name is…

Will. You may know of me but you don’t know me. For years we’ve chilled, partied, cried, fought, traveled, explored, listened, watched, wrote, IM’ed, text messaged, called or even been intimate with each other; We’ve cooked, bought, stole, exchanged, made, downloaded, created, prosed, posed, taped, clicked, snapped, poured or even heavily thought about each other; We’ve sat up nights, leaned and watched the stars, squinted our eyes at the sun, dove deep below the ocean, climbed up through the trees or sat on our knees in the grass with one another; We’ve helped each other with our problems, paid bills, checked people, protected one another, stopped bleeding, wiped away tears, calmed each others fears, corrected our smiles by defying the odds of our frowns… but you don’t know me.

I spoke with a friend last night, who I’ve known for years. Going on 3-4 years. I’ve experienced a few things with her, she’s living her life and I’m living mine as well. But recently she’s been reaching out to me because, well she misses her friend as we haven’t talked much. 3 days of missed calls lead to us finally talking and it was good to really talk to her. Like really have a conversation, not “so what you been up to?” “nothing, nothing how bout you.” We just talked and talked about life, mine and hers, work, relationships, the gamut of what adults talk about and it felt good. But during the conversation I started talking about how i deal with stress and being depressed (which i have a good handle on now) and it surprised her that I know a lot of about it.

She saw me as “a fun loving, care free, party guy, who just enjoying life for everything its worth.” my response was pretty much… “really?!” This exchange made me realize how much I keep to myself and block out certain aspects of my life. I’ve pretty much lived my life like a Sleeper Cell. Everyone knows something but no one knows everything. In return I think it created different versions for everyone in my life.

At some point, I lost the understanding to maintain who had clearance to what information and how often. Everyone thinks they know me but what they knew wasn’t really me as a whole but only part of me.