TheBanyanTree: You're a mystery

[Monique Colver]

You're a mystery to me. Everything about you puzzles me, and it's not you, it's me. Your mind is opaque, and while you think you know me, and maybe you do because everything in my head comes spilling out, a torrent of random thoughts, you keep your thoughts to yourself. Close inside, because inside they're safer, less subject to damage. Less handling, smaller chance of letting loose something you wanted no one to know.

Everything you've experienced is foreign to me, and I can only imagine chalk outlines on a field of black. It's always been that way for me, everyone else a mystery I could never hope to solve. Even if I know, and you tell me, and show me pictures, it's still a mystery to me. I am the only one that I know, and even that I'm unsure of.

What happens when you live your entire life in one place, with the same geography, the same people, the same customs? I could never know that, even if you tell me. Is it comforting? 

Everywhere I lived was different, and everywhere I lived I was different. What if I'd never been anyplace else? Who would I be now?

People are a mystery to me. There always seemed to be something I couldn't see, as if I stood at a distance, just enough so the picture I saw was indistinct, vague forms speaking a language I don't understand. So many people I thought I knew, but didn't. So many surprises, some disappointments, some happy pleasures. 

As opposed to unhappy pleasures I suppose. I need an editor.

We're all mysteries to each other, in some way, aren't we? Maybe not, but to me everyone is a mystery, a secret that is always just beyond my reach. 

Monique
Sent from my iPad