I hide.  I hide from everything.  I hide to avoid conflict.  I hide to avoid intense questioning.  I hide to avoid embarrassment.

I hide behind books.  I hide behind my computer.  I hide under the blankets on my bed.  I hide by living as far out of town as I can.

I tend to hide more when I’m feeling uncomfortable or put on the spot.

Recently, while on vacation, I had a situation in which someone was trying to have a serious conversation with me.  I was playing on my computer when he came over to talk to me.  Instead of putting up my laptop, I continued to play on it while he talked.  He, of course, was irritated by that because I wasn’t paying complete attention to him during this serious situation.  I wasn’t because I was hiding.  I was allowing the laptop to become a barrier between him and me because I was afraid of where the conversation would go.

My hiding is a direct by-product of fear.  I use it to avoid the fear of what a deep conversation may show me.  I used it to avoid the fear of being bruised or hurt by words or people in general.

I didn’t realize I was hiding until recently.  That situation with the laptop turned into a situation that became bigger than the actual conversation ever would have become.  When I got home and discussed the situation with a friend, I realized what I had been doing.  I started looking at my life and looking at the different ways I hide.

When I was a kid, I would hide from the angry words and yelling voices by going into my room, grabbing my current favorite book, and crawling under the blankets into bed.  I could lose myself in those words and everything else, outside of my bed, would be lost into the hazy boundaries of “the real world.”

In my early 20s, I continued this behavior.  I lived with a very abusive man and I would hide behind books.  I took a book anywhere we went.  There were times when he would grab the books out of my hands and tear them apart so I could not read them anymore (and there is nothing more sacrilege to me than to tear apart a book…that tore me apart.

Now, in my 30s, I have moved myself physically from people to hide from anger and direct probing.  I have hidden behind computers.  I have hidden in my rural retreat.  I have hidden by distancing myself from people.

I don’t want to hide anymore.  I want to loosen these binds that I’ve put on myself and start to live again.

I want to be free.

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An aside:  I’ve finally decided to get some of my photography online.  If you’re interested, you can check out my gallery at Metasequoia Designs.