"When You Won't Listen to What It's Hard for Me to Say"

I am a naturally private person. I hide things away, storing them, hoarding them, keeping them for my own knowledge, as if it gives me some sort of edge over people. They don't know me. Only I know me, and I delight in that secret knowledge. Secrecy is just a part of my life, a part of my personality. It's why I love conspiring and plotting the same way I love introspection.

That said, I also have friends. And as smart and witty and fun as I might be, that is only enough to develop superficial, boring friendships with people who follow me around like sheep. I hate sheep. I have no problem hanging out with myself, and if only boring people surrounded me, no matter how much they wanted to spoil me, a. I would resist it, and b. I would grow incredibly tired of it and kick them out of my life. Since I don't kick everyone out of my life, and there are still people whose phone calls I welcome and whose words I value and whose time spent with me I never regret, I must go beyond that superficial level, at least with some people.

So I don't keep everything locked away. There is a hierarchy in my friendships as I divulge things, piece by piece. But there is no pattern to these divulgences; I do not have a list of what to tell people when, as if they pass some stage of friendship with me I dispense a portion of my soul like some kind of merit badge. I spread things out, going by how I feel. There are some people who know me so well, that they know what I'm thinking and how I arrived there. People who sometimes know me better than I know myself. People who know what I like and what I don't and what interests me and what bores me and why and how and for how long.

I am a private person. But as much as I like that, I equally hate it. Perhaps I should make a booklet explaining me and detailing every way I feel, with revisions every 3.9 seconds as something changes. I could pass these booklets out to people so they would never break my cardinal rules. Life would be great.