No More Stale Crackers

Today's prompt for REVERB14 is:

What nourishes your soul?  How would you like to incorporate more of this into your life in 2015?

"Desperately seeking partners in crime."

In my head, the idea of something that "nourishes the soul" leans me towards thinking of something done in solitude...by yourself...with no one knowing what you're doing and no one there to interrupt said doings...but that is NOT what immediately popped into my mind today.

Nope, my weird brain went full steam to the opposite of that and refused to come back.

What really got my butter churning today was the idea of simply hanging out with friends who get me...people with whom I am comfortable enough to be my normal crazy self and who feel the same way about me...nobody asking anybody to be anything other than what they are.

Don't get me wrong, I tend to be a fantastic hermit 99% of the time.  I need time away from people because it can get to be too much and I need to recharge or else I get...I don't know...psychotic might be the best way to describe it.  

But there's a part of me...a really huge part...that wants to be...whatever the opposite of a hermit is...

I've always been ok with solitude, with being lonely...it never really bothered me that much.  But there is a huge difference between being lonely when you're actually alone and being lonely with someone in the same room.

I've allowed my circumstances over the past several years to overrule my need for social interaction.  Avoiding it saved me from arguments and headaches and wasted breath and I've allowed myself to be "content" to just come home every day and sit in relative silence and an uneasy form solitude and say that was enough.

It is not enough.

All I want is to go out and talk and laugh and be silly and have interesting and/or ridiculous conversations.

It's been shoved into my head that I want too much...that I'm asking something out of the way and unreasonable.  I quit even mentioning it, because it only causes trouble and nothing ever ends up happening anyhow...sadly, a lot of things seem to that way...and I have no patience for wasting my breath.  

Over the course of this past year especially, I've realized that I don't actually need anyone's permission to do anything.  

I've gotten to the point where, once or twice,  I've just gone and had my (completely innocent, just so we're all on the same page) fun and then skirted around the truth of where I was.  But I really don't like the secrecy of it. I hate feeling like I have to sneak around as though I were doing something wrong, when all I want is to have a friend...god forbid that happen!

I've neglected my need for companionship and conversation and variety for so long.  It's especially disappointing because the opportunity for these things is all around me.  It's like being in a banquet hall full of all kinds of delicious foods and having someone force you to sit there and eat stale crackers every day.  Sure, you can survive, you're not starving to death, but are you really getting everything you need to be healthy and strong?

In the coming year, I'm going to quit letting those stale crackers be forced down my throat!  I'm going to do whatever it takes to not let my soul wither away from starvation.  I will let myself get full on the variety of life that is all around me, and I won't let myself feel guilty or ashamed for stepping up and claiming the things that I need to enjoy life to the full.