My friend from HS has been sending me emails. Not the personalized ones, but the forwards. the one today was "how well do you know so and so" and it had a bunch of questions. usually, I delete them, but i figured I'd answer these, cause what would it hurt.

But it's such a good concept--how well do you know a person. And what does that mean? Not just what their favorite color is but how they'd react, respond, relate, feel to certain topics, movies, television shows, events, etc. That I suppose is really knowing a person. And I don't know if I get that far with most of my relationships. I know that most people would know who I think is cute, and my favorite movie, but could they guess that I am outraged by the genocide on the African Continent. That I often feel helpless by not feeling like I can do enough to help people? That my life often feels incomplete for a variety of reasons: that I'm not doing enough with my talents, that the love of my life is far away and unattainable, that i spend my stressors on work events and not LIFE events?

That was always the hardest thing when faced with death for me: who really knows me? Have I had any time to make a difference? Do I just not say anything because I'm afraid of a confrontation and I am letting myself down? Am I afraid of risk, of chance, of fate, of LIFE because I'm afraid that once someone gets to know me, the real me, that they'll be disappointed? I don't know. I think we all struggle with that reality. That having someone know all about you--not just the trivia facts--is daunting because they're in your head, they're a part of you. And I don't know how many of us are truly ready to relinquish that much control to another person. I think that's why we hide, why we tell tales, and jokes, and avoid answering questions that speak to the things we're afraid to admit. I don't know. I know that when I'm out, I'm not thinking about my next CT scan. But it's there. It's in my heart. It's something that I wish someone just understood, instead of me having to say it. But if I don't voice it, if I don't make it real, how can I blame anyone for not understanding how hard it really is?