When I shut the door at night, I shut myself off from the world. This is by design. I am not blind to the fact that I am a fairly private person. I keep to myself and most of myself away from the world. Each thought in these words is the closest someone will get to see who I am, and beyond my honest, wholesome time spent with the world, everything else is my own. Each thought, each instinct, and each idea is my own. In a world where you have all of you for display at all times, I enjoy a quiet, thinly-veiled privacy. Only curated parts of my life remain public, spread around like creamy peanut butter on a hot, crisp slice of toast. There is no grain in sight, no gap in between for you to see the whole picture. Unless, of course, you indulge.
I am a terribly selfish person in this regard. All of myself is my own until someone asks, and if and only if they ask that I share things they would not obviously and apparently see on their own. This lack of being forthright about my days and life is not out of some mystique. It is only that I do not much care to talk about things people don’t quite think about, and as ironic as it sounds, for these bookmarks are anything but that, I don’t quite enjoy talking about myself. It is, of course, a welcome surprise when someone asks me something no one else has, and this happens so frequently that I wonder how content people, even those closest to you, are when given a slice of the bare minimum of your existence. And so, whenever a question like that is put forward, I oblige happily, and I humour the request earnestly.
All families have folk stories of their own, pieces of irrelevant, personal history that they talk about when they talk about things. The other day, we recalled the time when we were children, and as the time and circumstance would have it, I spent a fortnight in a room by myself. Of course, by my own volition, like all things I do. And knowing this story and having heard it a million times, when I sit alone, visit the theatre alone, or walk alone, I often question this desire for anonymity and privacy. I think about that room I cannot remember. I wonder if I ever left.