“Whatever it takes
‘Cause I love the adrenaline in my veins
I do whatever it takes
‘Cause I love how it feels when I break the chains”
“Whatever It Takes” – Imagine Dragons

Ahhhh….I love the thrill of new things. That’s part of my problem. I want something new all the time. It keeps me full of anticipation, full of excitement. And devoid of anything close to a commitment. I’ve been fighting myself over this one because half of me wants security; the warmth of sameness; the comfort of one. The other half? It wants nothing to do with it. I like choices. I like being able to change my mind. It’s a constant search for greener grass. I love the chase…I just don’t like being caught. And I’m good at quietly slipping away just when you think you’ve corralled me. Too good. So, you can see my dilemma. It means I have a lot of first dates. It means I have a fair number of seconds. Rarely a third, mostly by choice. I can argue I guess that I just haven’t met the right person – and I’ve had more than plenty of time to do that. I think it’s more likely that I choose the wrong ones on purpose – it makes it easy to accept when things don’t work out. I never intended them to in the first place. I am my own worst enemy; my own saboteur.

I’ve had to take a hard look at what I must look like to the outside world.  I’m having trouble defining it. It’s constantly shifting every time I try to pin it down. I’m either too open or too closed off. Too easy or too hard. Too much or not enough. Too serious or too flippant. Which version of me you get depends on my mood, which one I’m willing to let you see, which one I think you expect (which means I’ll give you the opposite :)) and which one I think you can handle.

I’ve never quite felt like I fit – anywhere. And because I didn’t fit, it was easy to leave. And leaving relieved me of my responsibility. I’ve handled plenty of responsibility in my adult life and maybe too much in my younger years. Maybe that’s why I don’t seem to want it now. I don’t want to be responsible for someone else’s happiness. I think deep down I’m afraid I’ll fail and that’s really the issue.

Maybe it really is true that there is someone out there who can deal with all the versions of me and love them all. That would be nice. Really nice. But, I will never know if I’m not willing to show someone all my colors and doing that is well, something I’m not super comfortable with.  When I weigh the risk vs reward, reward always wins and I put some of my crayons back in the box and only color with one at a time.

So, until I figure out how to be a rainbow, I’ll tell myself all kinds of things to make it OK. And it is. It’s OK. But it’s not great, and I think it should be great.

“Always had a fear of being typical
Looking at my body feeling miserable
Always hanging on to the visual
I wanna be invisible”