I've been driven to misanthropy. I think it's from the constant contact with others. Growing up, I've always been pinned as a social butterfly. My reputation proceeds me sometimes and I didn't mind that strangers would say my name and how they've heard about me somewhere, somehow.

But then from all that socializing comes the inevitable drama. I avoid it like the plague, but it seems that in order to interact with others, one must also accept the possibilities that those interactions can one day grow stale or sour. They will betray you, annoy you, hurt you, and lie to you. They will steal from you--maybe nothing tangible, maybe it was your trust.

One part of me wants to continue to socialize and another part of me, that comes from being painfully perceptive, just wants to be a hermit forever. Never to have to deal with the anxiety of hosting a party, never to feel left out from group outings or 'the loop', never to feel the looming threat of fading friendships or of being forgotten entirely again.

and then I read this quote. And it woke me up.


"Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won’t either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could." -Louise Erdrich (The Painted Drum: A Novel)