"Aw, Deleva, don't be so hard on yourself! I've said it too!"
If you thought some variation of the above, then my trap has been sprung. Because you see, I have bad news.
It's the stupidest thing you've ever said, too.
No judgement meant with that. Everyone's said it, and it's also the stupidest thing they've ever said. It's a stupid fucking thing to say.
Of course no one understands you. No matter how close you are to the people in your life they will never fully understand you. Your perspective is shaped by a zillion trillion bazillion things that are unique to you. Your mind is an ocean and every experience, thought, hurt, triumph, degradation, compliment, and happy moment are drops in it. Remove one drop, just one, and it won't be the same ocean. It won't be you.
No one else has that same configuration of droplets. That's individual. Two people can go through the exact same experience, timed down to the second and it still won't really be the same experience, because your perception of it is colored by a trillion things that came before it. And those trillion things are different than the other person's trillion things. Sure, there'll be some overlap. But there will be differences too.
So no one can understand you. No one can understand me. It's not because you're deep or I'm complicated. It's just because we're individuals. And that's okay.
I revel in the idea that no one can understand me fully. There are some things that should just be mine, and mine alone. You don't need them, any more than I need yours. Sometimes I live in that solitude. And please note my wording: solitude, not loneliness. There is a difference.
I think when people crave understanding what they really seek is acceptance. I don't need to be understood. Given my above opinion there's always that voice in my head when someone says, "I understand completely!" that replies, "No you don't." But what I think they're really trying to convey is acceptance.
What I really want, what I really need, is to be accepted. I don't need you to understand everything I do. Sometimes I don't make sense, even to myself. I go to extremes. I do stupid shit that I know better than to do. I stay up too late and then get up too early. I eat cheesecake. I sometimes drink more than I should. I am embarrassingly bad at math. I forget to take my iron pills. I forget to call.
I sometimes even do good things that you might not understand. I am friends with people that maybe I shouldn't be. I forgive easily and quickly even the most hurtful wrongs. I laugh at weird things inside my head that make me look and sound crazy and do not translate to words with even half the humor I thought they would. I apologize to people for perceived wrongs, not because I think they're mad or that there will be consequences if I don't, but because I hold myself to this weird code where I will apologize if I think I've done something to wrong you even if you don't see it that way.
I do not need you to understand this. I don't expect you to understand it.
What I want is for you to say, "Okay. I don't get it. But that's okay" and just leave it there. Maybe you like it; maybe you don't. Maybe it makes you laugh; maybe it drives you up a fucking wall. But if you can accept it, we can be friends.
And what a mammoth effort it can be to set aside our own egos and not try to superimpose ourselves and those billion trillion gazillion experiences over the lives of others! But how freeing when we finally learn to do it, when we stop struggling to comprehend and just allow ourselves to be for a while and better yet, when we allow the others in our lives to just be in our presence.
It's a glorious thing, like seeing the birth of a new foal, or witnessing the actual moment that a rainbow forms, or watching a single leaf fall from a tree.
That is true friendship. That is true companionship and comradery. That freedom is the greatest thing we can give one another and it is rare, my friends.
And that is what I seek. No more. No less.
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