Moonlit Reverie

I wish I could type in the moonlight. When I first walked into my fun room, the moonlight was coming in through the slats of my blinds forming dreamy patterns on my desk. They disappeared when I turned on the light. There's a metaphor in there somewhere...

There are nights when my brain just switches on and wakes me up. My body thinks it's time to pee, but it's just a smoke screen. What's really happening is something is eating at me. So I tossed and turned for a bit trying to recapture sleep. It was 3:45 am after all... But the thoughts came crowding in again.

Time to purge. Put on the coffee, and come to my trusty outlet. My blog.

I've been unfaithful to my blog. Not because I have replaced it with anything meaningful, but because I silenced myself for a bit, for whatever reason. The brain however, cannot be silenced. No matter how much I struggle with the thoughts, some slightly profound, others definitely needy, maybe even petty, the thoughts win.

Then these questions woke me completely up. "Why am I shutting myself up? Why am I censoring myself? Judging myself for the thoughts that occupy my mind?" They are my thoughts; good, bad or indifferent, I own them.

Like yesterday, it became viscerally apparent to me how different I am from so many people around me. At lunch, we were talking about a recent award show host and his "humorous" monologue that sparked a lot of controversy. I don't find "roast" humor funny, everybody else finds it hilarious. As I watched them laughing uncontrollably at the clips on YouTube, it became apparent that  I have become or maybe have always been The Odd Person Out.

And how do I feel about that? Well obviously some part of me was affected because here I am in the early hours of the morning blogging about it. Some part of me must feel acutely isolated by the experience, but there's another part of me that asks, "So what? So what if I see things differently, experience them differently? I'm sure I'm not the only one to have felt this way. Isn't it what makes each of us unique? Do we all have to see everything the same way to belong to a group?" Or maybe. I just need to lighten up!

The irony of it is that I myself was joking earlier in a way that could be perceived as mean-spirited. My friend was retelling an experience she had with a colleague of ours who invited her to one of her parties. The woman in question approached my friend with, "I'm having a Latin-themed party. You can be the Mexican." (My friend has Mexican roots.) Who invites someone to a party because of their cultural background? A Latin-themed party to me means choice of food and music, maybe even decorations, not which guests will be invited... The whole thing struck me even harder because this woman is an educator so filled with ignorance, it's scary. So yes, I ragged on her a bit and spoofed the situation to bring out its stupidity, so in many ways, I'm no different than the award host. Does it make me a hypocrite?

Probably what it makes me is someone who over-thinks things, and needs to chill out. Maybe I should enjoy what I enjoy and appreciate that others enjoy other things without giving it such sinister and all-encompassing meanings. Maybe I should just enjoy the moonlight through the slats and stop ruining things by turning on the light. See? I knew there was a metaphor in there somewhere... :)