somebody who i knew who knew this other person
its this. its this every day for the foreseeable future. who am i? i dont know what to ask anymore. i dont know who to go to. theres a part of me that really wants to ask people really personal questions sometimes. because i know theyd have an interesting answer, maybe not interesting, but it would be different. i dont know how to express myself without self-flagellating. i feel the need to punish myself so often. its not normal. telling myself how much i secretly hate myself is a way for me to torture myself even further. there was a reading in my class about self-knowledge and i didnt even finish it. it was meandering. everything is meandering. why doesnt anyone have answers? why does everyone respond to your questions with even more questions? im tired of being asked to discover things myself. im tired of being expected to just engage in the questioning. there is such dread in always questioning, there is such dread in trying to see being in a state of constant questioning as a noble, enriching or enlightening state of mind. there is no value to this. i feel sick. there is definitely a connection between knowing yourself and being able to love others. lets start here: you cannot love what you dont know. simple: a song cant be your favorite song if you havent heard it before. people are complicated. i know of someone. i know where they grew up, i know their name, their first, middle, and last, i know their mother's name, i know their extended families names. i know where they are regularly, i know who they associate themselves with, i know where they have been today, i know where they will be tomorrow. i know their hopes, their aspirations for the future, their political views, the color of their eyes, the color of their hair. i know the type of underwear they prefer, i know the type of person they are into romantically. i know their go-to dinner choice, i know their take-out choice. i know where they have worked. i know where their mother grew up. i know who they lost their virginity to. i know the books they like. thats just off the top of my head. that seems like a whole lot to know about someone. (sidenote: i say i have a bad memory; but we remember these things about so many people dont we? im pretty good with birthdays as well) maybe even too much. i list these things off, and its not everything but its comprehensive enough, and i think, if i look at myself, how much do i think these things actually are me? if someone knew these things about me, would i say they 'know' me? what does it mean to know someone? i know these things about them. i know the cold hard facts. i also know some more personal things about them, like preferences and habits. still, would i say someone knows me because they know those things about me? probably not, so let us keep going. i know some things that don't quite fall under preferences or habits perfectly. for example, i know this person gets anxious at night and struggles to sleep a lot. i guess that could be a habit, but theres a bit more to it. i know they cant sleep sometimes, and i know they are a bit fickle. i know they are a bit weird overall, i know they are scared to talk about themselves to other people. heres where i would maybe say someone does know me if they knew these things about me. what are these things? could you call them quirks? a quirk? a specific type of quirk? a personal quirk? a character quirk? character quirk sounds good enough. i wonder if theres one thing people would be able to point to and say, if someone says this about me, if they know this about me, then they know me for sure. for some reason my mind immediately went to myself at 12 years old. if someone knew what i looked like back then, then they must know me, because i dont show pictures of myself from back then to anyone. but thats just a weird insecurity of mine. anyway. i dont think i have something concrete i can point to and say someone really knows me if they say that about me. so, i listed of all of those things. would it ever stop if i tried to list everything? at what point is it too much, and what is too little, to be able to love someone. the interesting thing is that peopled dont love others based on information like that. its through their conversation and through their company. how can you even define such a thing? theres still a part of people that will always remain a mystery, i think. there are reasons i can think of off the top of my head; one being that people are constantly changing. you're really never the same person you were a year ago, you are at least a little bit different every passing moment. how can you 'know' something, if its constantly changing? i guess thats what happens though, with people who are married and stuff, they grow apart because they change. so how? is loving someone your whole life impossible then? are all the friends i have now, my boyfriend, my parents, are they all going to change inch by inch every year to the point where one of us does not love each other any more? no, i know thats not true. so what is it? if it takes knowing to love, and people change constantly, then theres a reason. people dont change drastically. then there is something about people that is able to remain throughout their lives. something that defines them in a way that they carry with them. something that stays the same throughout. what is it? maybe its their soul. who knows. i need to shower. i gave it a shot.