I feel pretty... oh so pretty...

When I was in high school and college, every so often I would paint my toenails. Nothing girly, but usually a deep blue or forest green. I'm not really sure why. I guess I just wanted to make a bit of a statement about my individuality. My father even "supported" me by painting his big toe blue to show my mother that it didn't mean anything other than that I was bored.

My sophomore year of college, most of the people of dorm room floor knew me as "Blue Toe Boy..." I don't think it lasted for long, maybe a week or two, before I removed it, but it certainly was fun to see the surprise on people's faces.

Which brings us to yesterday...

Hanging out with one of my friends, watching Iron Chef last night, while she was painting her toenails... somehow it seemed like a good idea again. Probably won't last the week, but my toes are currently a deep burgundy.

Redskin colors? I'll go with that...

Walls

So I've realized that I'm really good at building walls around myself...

I do it to keep people at a certain distance. I think I believe I'm trying to protect them from letting me hurt them as I'm fairly certain I often do. The key drawback to this distance though, is after a while, people find something/someone more interesting to focus on, and they move on, and I end up realizing that I'm the one who's being hurt by abandonment. I was taking the attention/friendship for granted, and now its too late for me to pull it back in.

I do it with friends, I do it with potential romantic partners, I even do it with my family. Time and again, I warn people to stay away, don't let me hurt you, and yet with increasing frequency, I'm the one who ends up in pain when they ultimately take my advice.

When you have a crisis of confidence it becomes so easy to shun the outside world, tell everyone that you're not worthy of their time, of their emotion, of their attention. But once they grow tired of the negativity, or just find some new person or way to channel their desire to help, you end up as the one who actually finds out that it is a lonely existence, and suddenly you really wish all that attention was where they had tried to send it.