Halloween all year long

I'm ready to discuss the "to show or not to show your feelings" subject. It comes down to control. Let's face it, once we open ourselves up by expressing our feelings we're giving up a bit of control. The ball's no longer in our court.  I believe self awareness- the ability to look both inside and outside of one's self- grants the ultimate form of control.  With that ability we can fashion the version of ourselves that we want the world to see. It's Halloween all year long. We all do it. But by virtue of that fashioning, are we truly ourselves if we pick and choose and hide the rest? 

I think when we develop feelings for someone, those pretenses are exaggerated more than normal. We worry more and more about what the other person thinks of us and how they might feel if we do this or say that. Then a few months or even years pass, and all of a sudden the person you're with wasn't the person you met. A friend of mine had a fling with a guy who was definitely not a keeper- from the beginning she knew it and, as her friends, we knew it. But in describing the relationship, she said it was the most honest she had ever been with a guy. Why? Simply because the guaranteed absence of a future liberated her to be able to be herself. It didn't matter if he agreed with her opinion on discrimination to minorities in the credit market or that he never met her parents. I guess it could be called a fling.  Either way, according to this friend, its was a very honest fling.

If you're reading this and you're thinking, "Hey, I should start dating my friends. We already know all the annoying things about each other and yet we're still able to get along."  One word: Don't!