noiseless noise

it's 44 this year. with age you are suppose to be more comfortable in your skin. more confident and fearless. at least that is what it appears to me when i was growing up and looking at the faces of older people.

and am i?

i guess it is true that you care less about what people think. but i believe that only applies to people  you don't know. at least it does for me. i told my daughter that i am actually shy in nature, and she refused to believe that. her mother? shy? the loud-mouth woman who would randomly talk to strangers and voice out her requests to waiters? she doesn't see the timid and self-conscious side of me. i'm only shy with the people whose opinion i care about, people that i know and people whose judgement i value. she doesn't see when i look down on the floor or shuffle my feet. i'm shy when i actually give a damn, my two personalities a contrariety, like two opposite people living in one body.

but you don't grow more fearless as you grow older. if anything, i am more fearful. i'm afraid of swatting the fly, i am hesitant to destroy the ant, i think twice before i kill the mosquito if it doesn't appear to be interested in my blood. heck, i feel remorse at pulling out the weed!! i can almost hear them screaming for their lives, imploring me to think twice about annihilating their existence. with my own two hands i decide what lives and what doesn't? what gives me that right?! a plant, growing wild and carefree, undesirable only in my opinion, gets ripped out because it doesn't conform. yet what can I do? let the garden grow unkempt and untended? what is the point of having a garden then? it's a jungle out there (can't resist inserting this from the tv series 'monk')

i think too much, i know i do. who is so tortured by taking care of their garden? i am a paranoia begging to be released. i howl in turmoil inside when i have to squash the ants who are going about their day with such nonchalance. i question if i can live in peaceful co-existence with them. millipedes in the soil, cockroaches in the drain, ants in the kitchen, mosquitoes hidden away so i can never see nor hear them. i ignore those i can; like the lizards. i squirm when i have to kill those i can't. at 16 or maybe even 21, i was never thus. i never had a problem arming myself with the pest repellant spray. it was me against them in the survival of the wild. what has gone wrong? have i become more aware as i grow older? too aware?

it is burdensome and laborious living like this. yet i do not see a choice. i cannot determine what i will think or not feel. i can toughen up, like i already am trying, but i cannot not squirm in silence. i cannot be nonchalant about the whole thing. i cannot not be me.

what i need is to lie down on a comfortable daybed, in a dim room somewhere, and have a little chat with ms psychiatrist. i must be slowly going insane. you are witness to the slow degradation of someone's mind.