The Outsider

I've been making a conscious effort to reconnect with people I started to get to know but fell out of touch with. That's a lot of people, to be honest. Including anyone I write about here.

These attempts haven't had the desired outcome so far. Either people not remembering me, or just not seeming interested.

It makes me wonder about how many little lies people have told me, and how easily I believed them. Things like how they'd like to meet up again, things like that. I say "easily believed" but I'm not sure if I really did believe them. I think I probably doubted how sincere they were being, even if I wanted to believe they were being truthful. It was probably just me being naive. Really most were just looking to fuck and that was it. "We should do this again sometime" has as much weight as a mindlessly thrown out "how are you?"

At the heart of it is kind of this notion of having to either trust everyone or no one. Look at it rationally and you know it doesn't make sense. But it's still hard to move from 'no one' to, not the other extreme of 'everyone', but a more realistic middle ground. Sometimes people are going to say things (or not say others) for the sake of being polite. Sometimes they are going to lie. I've lied, although usually only about myself (and even then just to cover for the aspects of my current life that I feel ashamed to admit). It doesn't always matter, it's not always a big deal.

But lately, it just seems like attempting to open up more just leads to hurt.