Fade Away

I'm in a weird place right now.  It's not good or bad, per se, but just weird.  By which I really mean some things are really good and some are probably really bad but most are just in between.  So I'm okay.  And my life is really going pretty damn well. No complaints there.  I'm just in a weird place.

I want to fade away, sometimes.  I want to slip back into the person I was almost a decade ago, the quiet one.  I never opened my mouth.  I was polite and diligent and respectful and intelligent and my superiors loved me because I did everything they wanted and never rebelled or talked back.

And then all these people and all these things had to go and change me.  I had to go and develop opinions and something resembling confidence and then I had to actually learn to speak.  And sometimes I wish like hell that I could do all of it, because it's really nice to be seen as the quiet one in the corner and not the judgmental one with a few good opinions.

Because that's who I've become.  Some of the things I say sting and others are downright terrible.  I know that.  Sometimes they reflect my true opinions, but other times they exaggerate or understate them.  But nobody really likes that much honesty.  It's all so much better if it's at least delivered gently, but that's not something I ever bothered with.

I have two modes: biting criticism and absolute silence.  And I really wish I wasn't in a field where conversation and discussion are imperative, because I really just wish I could revert back to that.  I wish I could fall silent and never speak again.

I know this is exacerbated by the fact that it's late and I'm tired and I'm in a weird place, but I really just want to shut my mouth forever sometimes.  Unfortunately, I know that if I started, I wouldn't stop.