On Friends and Masks

If there’s one thing I learned about forming relationships,
it’s that some can be very fruitful, while some others I’d rather do without.

Every relationship I’ve formed has a ripple effect in my
life; for some reason, it affects the way I think, feel and cope throughout the
day.

The one thing that really bothers me is that I’ve been
wearing a mask, a lot of different masks to be precise; and I’m finding it hard
to tell people this is the way I really feel because for some impertinent
reason, they don’t believe the truth when it’s staring at them in the
face. So I find myself disappointed,
hurt and confused. The very reason why I’m
typing this is because I just walked out on them having a good time.

I have begun to doubt the things that I once so fervently
believed, and now I’m a broken shattered man. I can’t find my center, trying to balance on a log at a raging
river. I really thought that I had shown
people the real me, but it turns out I’ve compromised myself for the sake of
getting along with people. The people I
spend my time with, are not bad people at all; they’re actually quite
nice. The only thing that’s stopping me
from finding a new set of friends is the fear of not being able to find people
who can really understand me, and I feel that I am partly to blame for them not
understanding me.

People often can’t connect with me because of the way I
think. They usually say “nosebleed” – a
local term that means the person saying it doesn’t understand, like what I just
said was way above their level of thinking. Should it be my fault that I’m an active thinker, filled with ideas?

When I do try to level with them, I find myself thinking, “this
isn’t me at all”, and I usually just end up getting hurt because they get too
comfortable. Is this even rational or am
I just having pride issues?