I read once in an astrology analysis that I can come off aloof or unaffectionate because I'm actually shy and sensitive, and that's how I protect myself until I get to know people to figure out if they're trustworthy. But it said the problem is, while I'm being that way as protection, it also has the result of keeping away other shy and sensitive people who are the very people who would be able to understand my sensitivity and form rewarding relationships based on mutual understanding with me.

That's kind of fucked up, isn't it? Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

I also read a quote once that said, any decision you make out of fear, will be the wrong decision.

What about decisions made out of obligation?

Why is that the hardest thing for me? I guess I know why. I guess the question is, will I ever let myself be okay with refusing obligation when it's not fair to me.

Maybe that's why I'm so intense about my freedom and autonomy. It's not about being afraid to be vulnerable. I think when people get closer to me and find the sensitive side, the more private side of me, they realize I basically wear my vulnerability on my sleeve, though it would be a mistake to misinterpret vulnerability as weakness. I'm like a little kid who's willing to share everything and give my loved ones everything. And when others are vulnerable around me, truly vulnerable instead of using affected vulnerability as a way of manipulating compassion and obligation, I'm always very careful and gentle. For someone to be vulnerable around you is the highest gift, the ultimate in trust. There's a reason why my brother trusts me more than anyone else in this world. Because I know he trusts me unconditionally, I do everything humanly possible, even if it means my complete sacrifice, to protect him, to not fail him or hurt him, and he knows that. One of my duties in life is to protect his innocence, protect his ability to love unconditionally, protect the way he sees the best and the most beautiful out of life and people, because for innocence to exist in this world of corruption and chaos, it's like a rose garden in full bloom in the middle of a devastated, blackened war zone. You have to protect it, because if innocence in its purest, most exalted form no longer existed, then the world has been overtaken by darkness and we've lost hope.

People who can see me and understand me tend to get the most (and the best) from me, though I recognize, not everyone who I want to will really see me because I keep so much hidden, though it's all hidden in plain sight. I'll tell you everything you want to know. I rarely outright lie unless I don't know you and it's protective. But the more you are willing to show me that you are trustworthy, the more straightforward I'll be. I think if we lived in an ideal world where there weren't people out there who take advantage of others capable of high levels of compassion and selflessness, I wouldn't be this way. The problem is that if people are unscrupulous enough, it's easy to figure out that I'm defenseless against obligation. That if you make me feel responsible enough, it's almost impossible for me to allow myself to consciously let someone down, even if I suspect they may just be manipulating me. But if I find enough proof that someone been manipulating me for sure, hell hath no fury...

The shadow side of the healer is the warrior.

I used to describe it as this. Imagine that you live in a house on a prairie. And since people don't want random riftraft walking up to their front door, they usually build a fence around their property. Some people build their fences further out, so even if people come in, there's a buffer between the fence and the house. Some people build their fences too close to their front door. Some people don't build fences at all, but that's how you get houseguests that eat all your food, sleep with your daughter and never leave, so you really are better off at least building a friendly, unassuming fence. My point is, after a childhood of getting bullied and taken advantage of, I finally wisened up and built a fence. But I kind of built it too close to my house, so I go around acting like it's electrified and only telling people who look trustworthy where the gate is because I know, once they get past the fence and walk up to my front door, I don't have the guts not to invite them in. And I'm so sick of bad people eating my food, sleeping with my daughter and refusing to leave. Cool people, no problem. Eat my food. Sleep with my daughter. Hang out and smoke weed. But the problem is really when bad people get in because sometimes my being polite makes it hard for me to ask people to leave.

I know I'm getting kind of bent out of shape about this whole thing, so I can't stop talking about it. I think it's because I'm frustrated but I don't feel I'm articulating. I know I have a light and shadow side and I am quite capable of being less than noble, but I own all of it. But the one thing I never do, is force my will on people if it's for my own benefit without their benefit as well. If I'm being an asshole or if I'm one way and people don't like it, if people make it clear to me I'll own it because it's a part of me and a person has to own the entirity of themselves. And if it makes more sense and I can understand how, I'll often change an aspect of me that is not contributing to my being the kind of person I want to be. But it scares me and frustrates me when people misunderstand me but decide that's just what I am without really understanding or by just summing it up in a label. I hate labels. Labels destroy the essence that makes things alive.

This isn't exactly the same thing, but it reminds me of when I started the first grade, I started later then everyone else so I was the new kid, and I was too shy to really talk to anyone and make friends. This older girl saw this cool watch I had on and wanted it, so she told the teacher I'd stolen it from her. So I got in trouble and the teacher took the watch away and gave it to her, and for the rest of the day, everyone called me a thief. I kind of knew they didn't know me and they didn't know better, but I had no way of changing their idea of me, no concrete proof or way of articulating reason, and I didn't know what to do because the girl was wrong, the teacher was wrong, everyone was fucking wrong, but no one would listen to me. And the fact I couldn't get it sorted out myself, that I needed my dad to come to school with the receipt for the watch to sort it out for me, that I couldn't even fight my own battle because I couldn't make people listen and understand...that just made me feel powerless. And it made me lose a lot of faith in people. I know it's an old issue and I'm over it mentally, but I think sometimes when you have a bad experience that makes you feel powerless, emotionally, it's all still there...the "what if" of it happening all over again. Thinking about that day still makes me feel that metallic whine of panic inside my chest even though the experience can't touch me anymore. Maybe in a way, this issue is about power, but not in the way people think or in the normal sense of the word.

A person's personal strength comes from their ability to feel strong, to feel expansive, to feel confident in themselves and their ability to exercise dominion over their path and their reality. Power for me means wholeness, completion, an integration of the complete self so that your highest potential of energy flows clearly and strongly throughout you. In this way, my own personal power is important to me because to feel it means that I feel confident and complete. I could care less about power over another person, over external elements as a way to exercise my ego. But if I lose my ability to articulate, if external forces have assigned an untruth to me, a label that diminishes me and my expression of myself holistically, then yes, I think it fractures me and makes me feel weak, as though I have no power over myself and my path.

Ultimately, I strive to be a good person because I want people to have faith that good does exist. It doesn't have to be in me, but in something, because I've known what it was like to lose faith, to have people disappoint me or be outright vicious, cruel or deceptive. To have people who have decided on the intention of destroying the security, hopes and dreams of others who perhaps naively in their eyes, still believe that life means possibilities and goodness, not negativity and dog-eat-dog darkness, maybe because somewhere along the way, some evil person took it away from them. To have people take things away from you just because they could, because in that moment, at that point in your life, you weren't strong enough to stand up for yourself, that shouldn't extinguish a person's fire. I wouldn't want anyone to have to lose their faith permanently, to lose their hope that there's a positive force in life, that that force lives within so many things in this universe and so many people who try to do the right thing and protect the positive things in life that are worth fighting for, that in the end, truth prevails. Because I truly believe that life is worth living and there are positive forces out there that stand strong against the negative forces every day.

I think maybe all this spinning today is just bad feeling that will blow over tomorrow. I'm probably just having one of those days where I'm not feeling good, where it feels like my heart is slowly breaking.