From The Edge of A Familiar Place

I can't really say none of this isn't familiar. I know I am mostly out of my element. But in so many ways, I am in my element.

But my element of choice is mind, and I guard it like gold. Perhaps that is my problem. Locked down and guarded. So locked in my own mind, I don't experience.

Tonight, I was surrounded by beautiful girls, and was with the girl I love. What was my experience?

I experienced a California Burrito. It was pretty tasty. What was the conversation around me? Some was about food from places like Rancheritos. I can't say I remember fully.

I experienced a lovely moment with the girl I love, sitting on my lap and giving me butterfly kisses, rubbing her face on my beard, and talking in a Russian accent. 

But mostly, I experienced not knowing where to go. Not knowing what to say. Not knowing what to do. I played on my phone, to distract myself from my social anxiety (which was better than some alternatives I could have experienced, yet in so many ways, so much worse).

I did experience lovely things on the drive away. Daft Punk at night, cruising the roads in a car that is not my own, experiencing quiet lovely words, semi coherently spoken, but driven with love.

But I certainly didn't experience much tonight. I stayed in my head far too much. A lurking shadow as much as a person at the party. If I think about my experience, I can't say I was accepted. I feel like I was barely tollerated.

And this is why I don't go out much.

Guard up, defenses up, no real sense of anything. Thoughts in the way of experience.

Over-thinking: the action that kills poetry.