I Want To Know You

I want to know you. You seem like someone worth knowing. Every day I feel like I’m surrounded by people with hard edges and sour faces but I get the sense that you’re different. Too often people seem to think that they have the answers to everything. Their faces are trapped in permascowls and they can’t be bothered with anything besides their own narcissism. You aren’t like that. You still ask questions. You’re still looking for the answers.

People with kind hearts make me feel dirty. Like I need to give my personality a bath or something. Rub it clean of my neuroses and judgments. But that’s a good thing. When someone inspires you to take a long hard look at yourself and question all of your bad habits, they’re someone worth keeping around. It’s all about finding that person who’s able to hold up a mirror to your life and cause you to reevaluate the noise. It’s all about wanting to be a better man.

I know you’ll surprise me. I know you’ll take a right turn when I’m convinced you’ll take a left. All of this may seem arbitrary (why does it even matter if you take a right instead of a left?) but it provides me with a giant sense of relief. Do you know what it feels like to go through life rarely being surprised? The person who you think is going to hurt you ends up leaving you alone at three in the morning. The person who will never understand your jokes or passions turns out to be a stranger forever. You sleep with them, go out to dinners, and even run away to a bed and breakfast on a long weekend, all in hopes that they’ll start to make sense to you one day. But they never do. They just get more and more foreign each day. Experiences don’t always breed intimacy. Sometimes they just make the distance more apparent.

I want to know how your weekend was (I never want to know these types of things but you’re the exception to all my rules) and I want to know how you got that scar on your knee (biking accident when you were twelve? Tell me more! This story is more riveting than The Hunger Games!) and I want to know about your mom and dad (Are they assholes? No matter! We’ll start our own family!) I want to protect you. I want to preserve your innocence and drink it up for myself. You learn from me and I’ll learn from you. Deal?

You’ll open me up like an orange, leaving a mess of pulp and sticky peels everywhere. Certain parts of my personality will be extracted and I’ll find myself feeling stuff I never knew was possible. It’s strange to think how many things we’re capable of without really knowing it until we have a proper catalyst — something or someone to bring it to the surface. Dig, dig, dig. No, you might need to dig a little deeper. I have a lot of crap sticking on top of the good stuff.

In order for all of this to work though, you have to let me know you. You have to let me cut you open and trust that I won’t accidentally hit a nerve. You have to accept me for my shortcomings and understand that you’re a better person than I am. I’m a little rotten. Please don’t let that deter you though. Because when I look at you, I see someone who makes sense. I see an anomaly — someone who’s untouched by all of the modern inventions and hang ups. I see someone I want to know.