Hiding in plain sight.

A great deal of my life is devoted to hiding and/or giving people a false sense of who I am. I've discovered over time that I'm a far too deep and sensitive person to even come close to wearing my heart on my sleeve. I admit that I take a certain measure of pride in being mysterious to people that I interact with on a daily basis. I find I'm far more open on Facebook and this blog because I know that only people who are genuinely interested are going to take the time to read anything that I write. My work place is probably the setting where I hide the most and employ the most amount of subterfuge to keep people from getting to close to me. When you have the level of trust issues that I do, keeping secrets becomes an obsession of sorts. People who know me well enough that they can tell me anything in confidence and that it will stay that way, but I am not one to divulge any of my own secrets because they are mine alone to keep.

All of this behavior is designed to minimize any rejection, abuse, and/or abandonment that may occur when people get too close to me and gaze into the abyss of my mind. I live in a pretty deep, complex, and extremely dark world and I've found most people are not capable handling any sort of intimate knowledge of the inner workings of my mind. Notice I say most people, I know there has to be other people out the who are similar to me and this is where the "hiding in plain sight" part comes in. Though I really do prefer to wrap myself in mystery and subterfuge, I do leave very subtle clues for the very perceptive to find if they should happen along and are looking for other people like themselves.

We'll start with the music I listen to. Though I do listen to a fair amount of music for more superficial reasons, the artists that I am very passionate about usually write their own songs and frequently write about darker subject matters. Favorite songs of mine almost always resonate with me personally from a lyrical standpoint. Only one person in my life figured that I frequently express myself inner self in secret through the music I listen to and she turned out to be a bit of a scorpion. The clues are there though, it takes an intimate knowledge of a song's subject to tease out how it resonates with me. Most people aren't passionate enough about music to spend their time trying to disseminate what an artist is trying to convey in their music and not every music artist is actually trying to convey any sort of actual emotional meaning or message. Like I said above, not all of the music I listen to is deep, but traditionally my favorite artists tend to fall into the deep side of things.

I leave other subtle clues for people to pick up on if they are clever enough and paying attention. I've wanted to get a lot of ink over the last few years, but financial constraints and an aversion to the process of getting tattooed itself we significant hurdles to that endeavor. Not so anymore. It may seem that a lot of my ink is random and very nerdy in nature, but I assure you that every piece that I have has very deep and significant meaning to me on many different levels beyond being forms of art. I will say there is an overarching theme that ties a lot of my tattoos together, but that's as far as I'm going to go with any sort of explanation. Let's just say it's very complicated and personal in nature. The types of visual media that I watch usually also have overarching and deep undertones with me as well. They also tend to be pretty dark in nature. My favorite books are very complicated and layered works by one of the grand masters of science fiction. The very foundation of more than one of my core beliefs lie within the the six original books of Frank Herbert's "Dune" series. Once again, the clues are there, but you have to look VERY hard to see them, let alone understand their significance.

It's hard being a deep, layered, mentally ill, and flawed individual in today's world. I'm extremely introspective and spend a great deal of time writing or in deep thought. I constantly observing the world around me to try to understand it and try to figure out where my place in it is supposed to be. I tend to be very suspicious of anything trendy or very popular within popular culture. I'm very solitary in nature, mostly because I've discovered that people really can't handle the real me or have less than honorable intentions in their interactions with me. I'm absolutely bound and determined to go my own way and refuse to be influenced by or rely on anyone other than myself. I refuse to be defined or confined to any sort of category. I also absolutely refuse to be told or influenced by anyone when it comes to how I should think, what I should like, or how I should act. I'm really not fit for public consumption because of my flaws, fears, and complexities. People have a really difficult time understanding me......and that's okay. Most people are too wrapped up in their own worlds to look beyond those walls.....and that's okay too. Like I've said numerous times in this post, I leave subtle hints about the true nature of myself out there in the world for the right people to see and interpret. I like being a mystery and probably always will. This has the unfortunate side effect of being a lonely existence though. I used to worry about this a lot in the past few years, but I seem to have overcome my fear of being alone. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing, all I know is that I'm comfortable with it. In the meantime, life goes on and I go on.....as best I can and in the fashion as I see fit.....leaving clues along the way. Hiding in plain sight is fun.