A question of digestion

There are times when we pause to reflect on things and ask ourselves questions like where we really belong. We are thrown into a huge mosaic of society and slowly we try to learn where exactly we fit into it. We learn to like some people and perhaps not think so kindly of others and we learn to offer some of them our loyalty.
We choose a group or perhaps it chooses us and this satisfies our instinctive need to belong. This group is our community and like some walled village from centuries ago, it offers us boundaries where we can feel safety within it because alone and outside, out in the wilderness it can be quite scary.
We all get tagged and labeled as we mentally categorize people and pigeon-hole them. Labels stamped on our foreheads condemning us to some niche as we drift like ghosts through other peoples lives. I try so hard to peel my own labels away and I don't think it works really. I'll bet you have me tagged as something. It's natural!
So many years can be lost as we adopt the many roles for the many people we meet in our lives and trying to find our identity but once you've worked out who you are, you can really start to live.

This was something I feel that I was late in learning and just when I had it settled in my mind that this was one of those key issues of life I seemed to turn around and change my mind about it. I looked and I saw all that I was and all of the life I had grown into and all the labels that people had given me and this was "Jazz" in the raw light and in the darkness.
But we grow don't we?
Over time we change. Some people in our lives change and some of our priorities change. Is this when we peel off some of those past labels and wear new ones?
Does our personality change so much?
What I was I can now look back on with horror and feel a very nasty taste in my mouth. I was naive and I was manipulated and I learned a lot about life in the most painful of ways and even today I sometimes have nightmares about those times and those people. Perhaps those scars won't ever go away no matter how much I fool myself. I have hidden behind facades and became as plastic and as despicable as I sometimes think of them. Perhaps the combination of leaving all of that behind me and re-inventing myself and meeting new people and meeting Hitomi has allowed me the space to find myself.
Or did it?

At this moment deeply inside my core, I feel scared and uncertain and if I try to sit here and analyze just why I feel these things then I find that it's mainly because for the first time in these last few years I have not shared them. I have not written about them, I have not spoken to anyone about them, not my family and not my friends, not you and not my love. Containing it and keeping it inside of me has allowed it to grow into something huge and fearful and still I deny it. Then when eyes as sharp as the eagle picks out the worry from behind the painted smiles she asks her questions and the answers she receives are as faked as the smiles are and the dismissive gestures are employed to dispel the questions. Once more we return to the perception of a relaxed demeanor, but she watches from the corner of her eyes, waiting for my mask to slip again.

Last night we went out for dinner and I had the intention of opening up a little to test out her reactions but it never happened because we just had such a happy time together. I didn't want to spoil it and so kept the beast chained in that dark place. She gets very playful at times and how can I spoil such an ambiance?
Later at home some of my feelings manifested and I became aggressive in our play and she loved it. This showed me that this peach colored golden girl could do no wrong in her eyes. Last night my 'out of character' aggressiveness for her was simply a new dimension of our role-play and as strange as it seems it also allowed me to release some frustrations and just let them go.
Something that we all need!

A time and a place...