The Mask of Mysteriousness

"Trust me. Everybody is less mysterious than they think they are."

Claire Colburn seemed to know a lot about life, even though she spoke the contrary: I "don't know a lot about everything, but I do know a lot about the part of everything that I know, which is people."

Claire Colburn may be a fictional character, but how can I not admit that for some reason, I know exactly what she was saying.

I think a part of everyone is hidden from the world. I won't lie - I hate it when people claim that first impressions mean everything. I beg to differ. There is so much to learn about people, that a first glance and remark can hardly define what a person is really like.

Some people wear their emotions for everybody around them to know. I'm not a stranger to this, to my dispostion. And then you know those people who pretty much hide themselves from every person. That, I cannot relate with.

I think it's a difficult thing to find the balance between showing emotions when needed, and "hiding them for the benefit of others." To me, I believe that emotions should be expressed, feelings should be put out in the open many times, and not everything should be hidden away. After all, how can problems be fixed when we represent a false view of how we really feel? If I have a problem, but I'm blowing it off like everything is fine, how am I supposed to fix it when no one else even knows there's a problem in the first place?

I understand that we can't always make known to the world exactly how we feel. There are times when we need to (and I hate this word) "hide" how we feel.

I've also heard that if I want to be really boring, then I should say everything. I think that's a fairly true statement. If everyone knows everything about you, where's the excitement in discovering things about your? There isn't any.

So, my five friends that read so intently, I may not know much about anything. And ya know, I probably appear a lot less mysterious than I've intended. And maybe I wish I could have hidden feelings more often than I have. But that's what makes me, me. And that's all I can be, really. I wouldn't be who I am if I knew everything about everything. I wouldn't be who I am if I always hid how I felt from my friends. Every person needs to grow, needs to fix issues, and needs to strive to become better all the time - but I also want to be true to myself. So as I'm trying to become a better person, I still want to be me. In the end, all I really want to be is myself, only changing things when necessary.

And maybe this sounds crazy, but it seems like the more mistakes I make, the more I realize that I can be a better person. Maybe the best people in this lifetime have made the most mistakes. Well, made them, and learned from them.

Have you ever experienced a trial or situation that required you to give so much of yourself, that you didn't think life could get any more difficult? Every single semester that I've been at college, I have dealt with a problem that became "the hardest thing I ever had to do." You really learn about yourself and the problems that present themselves. Maybe I've been affected on a deeper level, but I really don't think I'm alone in expressing this.

Sometimes, I'll be on campus, and I'll be going through that really hard time, and I'll wonder if people notice how that trial is just tearing away from my soul. Sometimes I wonder if people notice. And then . . . and then . . . I ask myself a question: What about everyone else? I can't be that mysterious. You hear about the rumor and problems of people all around campus, but maybe it's hard to take into account that that "rumor" is collosal to the person experiencing it. I still remember hearing about a "significant" couple that broke up in the last few weeks of campus. It was one of those topics that everyone was so surprised about, but I can't even imagine what the two people must have been going through. I know that everyone doesn't take some things as difficult as I do, but I wonder what it must have been like having to deal with all of the compication, all of the pain, all of the embarrassment of everyone knowing, and still walking around campus, trying to mask all of that.

I think people do it all the time. Besides, what else can they do? They can't walk around, acting like the whole world has crashed down on them.

It just depends how mysterious they appear.