unchanging

Maybe I am foolish, and blind, and sentimental.

A friend said to me that I hadn't really changed much since high school. I find that alarming. Tried as they may to coax me this was a good thing, a wonderful thing, I still have my doubts. The reason? They said that of all the people they knew, that I understood myself, what I was, who I was, better than most people they know.

I somehow doubt that.

In the past few years, I've lost at least two people that I've loved a lot over the years. It sucks for me, because I when I can say that I'm close to someone, I invest a lot in them emotionally. Maybe I delight in their growth and change. But frankly, a concurrent theme is "You don't understand me, you never did and you never will".

So it makes me second-guess myself, which is really bad, I think, if I come across with self-knowledge.

Well, let me strike that. Second-guessing isn't all that bad. It's the self-doubt that I think is the killer.

But it depresses me. I means to me that no matter how long I know someone, or how deeply I love them, it is a constant reminder that we are separate, we know nothing, and understand no one. Maybe in my arrogance I thought that I might. I don't think I'll make that mistake again. I will never try to guess someone's positioning. They don't like it and apparently I don't know it.

Another wonderfully ugly thing - more than once I have been accused of having some moralistic high horse. As if whatever standards I have are too high or too unreasonable. Perhaps it is because there is a lot of things I am accepting of, as long as *I* am not the perpetrator. Adultery? I can forgive. Lies? Makes me unhappy, but I can forgive. Theft? Forgiven. Doesn't mean I forget. Doesn't mean that just because you do it, it gives me the liberty to do so as well. If you break the law and you go to jail, even if I'm complaining at bailing you out, that doesn't mean that I judge you for it. I'm probably just bitching about the inconvenience of having to go get you. However you landed in there isn't really for me to judge. The law is the law, black and white, and although I don't agree with every law, I follow them and understand that anyone else can be inclined to break them. So what?

But I digress.

What does that leave me with? Being totally inept at understanding people? Or without understanding of myself? Or both?