I'm afraid of people.

There, I said it. I'm absolutely terrified. There are stories like this one. It doesn't have to be about family, and it doesn't have to be about Michael Jackson. But what scares me is that these sagas of trouble and hurtful waters can be about anyone else. It happens all the time. Most of the time, we only summon the courage, at best, to write about it.

What a shame that we don't develop our social minds with perfectly identical connections and thresholds, so that we can always see and predict the mutual effects of people on people just by examining ourselves. Instead, we must learn how to express ourselves and our concerns in the dark, and be limited by what we don't know. The fact that this is frustrating doesn't bother me as much as the fact that it's dangerous.

We are really, really powerful beings. Like giants, we don't always see what we break under our feet. We grow into such great creatures by wrapping ourselves in layers and layers of socialized tendencies like onions. We don't know what is on our skin, sometimes ever. And it's scary walking with giants who can't feel their skins. It's absolutely terrifying.

And so by my theory there's a bunch of large, clumsy, lumbering creatures who step on each other and don't truly feel the way we interact. We hurt and punish, even loving all the while. We can treat other people like how we'd like to be treated ourselves, but unless we understand ourselves, we don't have the right to treat anyone in any way at all. Maybe it's safest to be awkward and evasive.

If you're wrapped really tightly, please, let go. I'm working on my own layers, but I'm also getting really paranoid.