As a child, I kept to myself and I kept everything to myself. For everything I did, there was a lie to cover it up. So accustomed to lying, it rapidly displaced truth. It just became easier that way.
So around this time last year, I resolved thusly: to tell the truth. When I started and continued, I felt relief. I no longer felt a fraud, I no longer felt trapped by my own "bullshit." I was a free man, free from the mental gymnastics required to keep all my lies afloat and free of the guilt of deceiving loved ones and others.
So what happens when I keep things to myself again, I wondered? The past few weeks I've felt flat and frustrated until I explored my feelings within - the causes of which are numerous - and I admitted to myself: I felt angry. Then once the truth was exposed, the anger faded into a feeling of positivity, a feeling of power. Old habits die hard, especially in phases of transition and upheaval.
In this phase of the dating moratorium when I have felt most alone, I have felt an intense want to express my love - sensually and platonically - without an outlet. It's the loving part that feels wounded most of all during the whole integration process of taking one's loneliness and re-framing it as a positive and rewarding solitude.
Throughout childhood and adolescence I found it easier to "not miss anyone" due to a fear of abandonment - but now I am feeling the lack and the sorrow that comes with the foreign concept of "missing" people. I would be lying to say that I do not. A couple of weeks ago, it's possible I could have returned a contrary answer. But now I allow myself to and emerge on the other side as a stronger man.
Thus, the past couple of months have been fueled by a tendency to bullshit myself, yielding varied results. Scarcely a year has passed since the beginning of my personal journey towards manhood and I've learned so much. But twenty-three years of bullshitting oneself is not simply unlearned in less than one. But the challenge is to sustain myself through the bullshit and emerge on the side of truth - and I wouldn't trade it for anything in this world.