It's been a horribly good week and it's only Wednesday.  Well... Thursday now.  The music tonight was amazing.  When I got to a show I really like, or even a club where the DJ is just right on with my mood or maybe where I can slot in my mood to be right on with the DJ and the dancers and the floor, all I want to do is let go and dance.  I'm sure I look something strange when I do.  I see how... restrained everyone else looks and I know I don't look like that.  I've been told by some folks, some in particular who's opinions I value, that they love to see me dance.  Secretly I'm sure they're in the minority, and sometimes when I'm in my darkest moods, I'm sure their humoring me.  Logically I know that doesn't make sense, but I also know just how unlikely a thing logic is when applied to how people behave.

People confuse me.  They always have.

It's not just dancing either.  Conversation, self expression of any kind, I have to reach a place where I really don't care what people think about how I'm going about it.  It's a strange place to be, because to make it work, I have to stay connected, connected to the music, or to the person I'm talking with, or anything that I'm trying to stay in a creative and open space with.

When I have energy at all, I have a Lot of it.  I'm overwhelming, I've been told.  Exhausting.  I am fascinated by a spirited exchange, in experiencing the ebb and flow of conversation or of music, of experiencing the dynamic changes as they move through.  I have to stay connected or I'm just flailing my arms and wasting my breath and someone else's time.  It takes a lot of effort.  From an outside perspective, I never know how I look, not when I'm really on and feeling alive.

And there it is.  I start to wonder, to worry and then to stumble.  I lose the beat or I started being too loud or talking too fast.  It would be nice to have a hand up, or just someone to tell me, yeah, you're a little over the top, but it's worth keeping up with you.  It would be nicer still not to need that.  Or not.  I'm still tempted by the tiny little castle, the bricked in monastery of one with a slot in the wall that I can close when I start to feel afraid of what people are thinking.

It would help if I didn't like people.  As painful and frustrating as they are, it's so much cooler to have a friend to share a joke with, or a box full of owls.  It's maybe even a little nicer to be able to say, yeah, wow, I'm not doing so well tonight and I'm feeling like I'm going too far and too fast and I'm a little wild, feeling a little on the edge and it might be a good thing if there's someone there to steer me away from the worst of it or at least to tell me what it was they saw me doing, see me doing.

I still feel like I have got to be embarrassing or overwhelming or just plain obnoxious and yet these are the nights when I feel most alive, most enthusiastic.  I'm not ever quietly enthusiastic.  It's a big thing.

An exhausting thing?

I had a really good night.  I hope the people around me did too and more than anything, I hope I contributed to their good night or at least didn't cut into it.  I worry about that bit.  A lot.