She started on her way up the dark and crooked lane or street not made for hasty progress; a street laid out before inches of land had value, and when one-handed clocks sufficiently subdivided the day.
- Tess of the D’Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy
Six months ago, I had a very clear goal in mind. Change for myself in every aspect of my life – career, attitude, personal life, environment.
Today, the changes have happened, but not always in the way I saw it. All this was meant to open me up to more experiences, to open me up to the world and to make my self more accessible. In many, many ways, that goal has been achieved.
However, it would be wrong to assume that I have changed my personality in any way. While I have become more open and accepting of difference and strangers, I have also developed a keener quiet that has dominated my thoughts.
Today, I speak to strangers and find out that they’re celebrating their parents’ 50th wedding anniversary. That others have been married 5 years and look forward to the next fifty. I allow children to pull on my pinkie and I compare their pretty pink shoes to their pretty pink drinks so their mothers than shove their little pink feet back into their little pink mary-janes. I have conquered my fear of strangers.
At the same time, I have withdrawn into my mind more fiercely than before, protecting the thoughts and opinions I have in the matters that matter. For no reason other than self-preservation.
Perhaps it is because I have uprooted too strongly, or perhaps the extroversion is exacerbating the introversion. Being aware of this opposing pull brings me comfort, and I find no need to stem its progress.
Part of this retreat into myself is an inability to divulge information in a public domain anymore. My status updates on Facebook are a web of incomplete lyrics and mindless observations of emotion, frequently occurring after the fact. I haven’t written in WordPress for the same reason.
So while the cobwebs gather, I’ll let the air get musty in this little corner here. There isn’t anything else to see here now, move along.
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