Throughout my existence I have never taken the time to really know how I am different.  A lot of people already assume that it's because I am gay and yes that makes me different from a lot of people, but it doesn't really encompass how isolated, lonely and completely adjacent I am to everyone that I know.  The way I feel 99% of the time in every situation that I am in I always deep down know that I am odd in some way, not completely 'normal' or what everyone perceives me to be.  It comes in waves where sometimes I manage to handle a situation but being honest to myself 90% of the time I would prefer to just walk away, to a place where there are so few to live out the time I have here, wondering what it is I am and why I am here.

As most of you know I am back working for Telstra, in a completely different role to what I have done before.  At first I really did think that I fit in to this team, so many different personalities where I etched into myself that I was around similar people who were the extreme compared to everyone else.  So many things about who I thought I was in the daily working life I really just don't know.  I've been told on numerous occasions that the 'work me' is so different to the person that I really am.  I'm bolder, louder, funnier and even more charming than the person I am at home, relaxed and somewhat content with my existence.  One person though seems to understand me, looking at me different than everyone else, knowing that there is more to me than meets the eye.  I guess that's true, usually I give so much away about who I am but I can't do that here, I get preyed on and made to feel as though I'm not coping, that I'm insignificant and really it was a waste to have me there in the first place.

Melbourne is fantastic.  It's the kind of place where all types of people can come to mingle and associate with people of the same nature and really start to express the type of person they are.  That part of my move I'm still waiting to happen.  I meet people, I socialise with people.  In the end I feel like I'm always ending up on the side of the room watching others as they easily connect and really take in the new.  Believe me I do what I can to 'fit' in to those that are around me, I keep up the enthusiasm that is required to really enjoy my time wherever I end up being.  At the end of it all I always know that I did what I could, but it just wasn't enough.  I want to have a lot of friends, I want to be that happy person I am 'known' to be, when really I feel as though I don't deserve this, I'm different, there is something in how I am as a person that pulls me back into wanting to be alone.

Tonight I was out for a friends birthday where I knew less than a handful of people.  For the first time I didn't have the strength to rise up to an occasion where I could be that loud, obnoxious, enthusiastic guy that everyone is used to.  I just wanted to be alone.  I wanted to sit there, preferably a fly on the wall where I could take in what was going on at the party, but didn't really have to be there.  I was glad that I was there for my friend, but something was tugging at my insides reeling as to why I was there with other people around me.  I don't understand this feeling, being alone has felt so horrible for so long it's as though finally I'm used to it, starting to crave the isolation where all I have is my mind and fiction to keep me sane and being enough to survive.

This whole evening, plus the last few weeks, has made me question the type of person I really am.  I feel quite different, on a different level to people around me.  I isolate myself when I get close,  I enclose myself with my thoughts when I start to get the things I originally set out to achieve.  It gets more difficult in the end to really know what it is in life that I really want. I've thought of going somewhere else, I've thought of starting afresh so soon, to a point where I don't want to surround myself with people who are 'like' me but people that would get to a point where they may understand me.  Somewhere isolated, somewhere cold, the heat I once craved no longer appeals to me, I would prefer to be alone. 

That said though I still want someone; someone that really is my equal and is meant to be with me for the rest of our days.  A person in my life that wants to share the loneliness with me, to just be us without everything else in this world ruining it.  I've seen so much happen to so many others, outside influences in a relationship that ultimately end up being its demise.  I want to be free, free of all the looks, gawking, expectations and pressure that I have pushing me down like a spider being crushed.  I'm beginning to wonder, at 26 if it's really going to happen and I get the 'happily ever after' scenario that I have always known would find me.  Someone to sweep me off my feet and really know that I am all to them as they are to me.  I love completely, as if nothing else exists, is that what is different? Is there anyone else that thinks the same way I do?

For the first time I really don't know the answer to my questions.  I usually am able to sum everything up in a few sentences to make myself understand the things that are going through my head.  Right now I just don't know; I don't know still what it is that makes me so different, so parallel to everyone and everything around me, as if it's a constant haze across my eyes as I wake up every morning.  I begin to wonder if I'll ever know, or if I am going to continue to float around in life just wondering, trying to figure out exactly who it is I am and what I am supposed to be doing.  I think I have played it well so far, I just don't know how much longer I can hold out for.  The end of each day ends with a tear, where I still feel lost, hopeless and still questioning where it is I am supposed to be and who I should be doing it with. 

In the end.. I really just don't know.  Believe me I wish I could, because than I guess I could hide it.  Hide what it is about me that makes people go away.  I really just don't know.  The real question is do I want to know what it is? Do I really want to know the time I am going to spend lonely without that person coming in to share? I am beginning to understand that those who meet their loved one are the lucky ones.  I feel like there is more, something else out there that would give me what I seem to need in order to feel complete, less alone.  I guess in the end, all I'm trying to say is.. The loneliness is palpable.