I Have Something I Need To Say

I am going to do a little steam-letting right now. Feel free to skip this post and come back in the next day or so for something funny again.

I am hyper-emotional today.

And there are all of these words in my head that I need to get out.

I am feeling a lot of pressure lately.

I feel pressure at the gym to be better and to finally get some of the gymnastics skills that I can not seem to master.

I feel pressure from people around me to be entertaining and "on" all of the time.

I feel pressure from society to be in a relationship at the age of 31.

I feel pressure from within to be better. At everything.

To know what I want to do when this job is over.

To have it all figured out.

To...

It feels never-ending sometimes.

I know that a lot of this is of my own making.

Certainly no one at the gym is saying, "Why can't you do pull-ups, Airplane?"

I just feel like I should be.

And probably when most people say, "So are you dating anyone?" They don't mean, I can't believe you are still single.

But it feels like it.

You have to understand who I am.

If you ask me a question, and I don't think the answer is acceptable. Or wrong. I get really upset.

For example, when I was actively on eHarmony and someone would ask, "So how's eHarmony? Do you have any dates scheduled?"

My answer would often be, "No, I'm getting matches, but not much communication."

It kills me inside to say that. And I feel bad about myself.

And I start to internalize all of the reasons that someone may not want to communicate with me on a ridiculous dating website.

You can't imagine the things I start to think.

It's stupid.

And I was communicating that to a friend once and she said, "Airplane, who cares?!? After all, you're not on there to get a bunch of dates - you're on there to find the one person you want to spend the rest of your life with."

And she was right, but it didn't change the way I felt.

Everyone has in their mind the way that things should go.

But every person is different. So one person's way of doing things, is not always the same as another's.

I am a communicator. I am not a game player.

That's just not who I am.

And I can't be that person.

I have to be me. I have to be able to do what feels right to me. I have to be comfortable with what I am doing and saying.

It may not be the way that you would it. And that's okay.

And I'm open to advice.

But I want everyone to understand that when they bombard me with questions and silences after questions that I already am nervous about answering - it hurts me.

Please do be honest with me and don't hold anything back, because that is who I am as well.

But please also think about the things you are saying and how they may be interpreted. And not just with me. With every person you communicate with.

Because I know that I am great person.

I know that I come with my flaws.

But I know that I have an extraordinary capacity to love. 

I know that not everyone is going to like me.

But I know that there is going to come a day when someone loves me for exactly who I am.

And they are going to know that because I will have always been just who I am to them.

(I'm not going to go back and re-read this - so please excuse any mistakes. I need the words to be just what they were coming out of my brain.)