Day One Hundred and Seventy Eight - Muddy

I like things to be defined. Well defined. Clearly defined. Especially my relationships. I like to know exactly what each relationship is, what I should expect, what the other person should expect. I like them to stay clearly defined. If they must change, the changes must be clean, no mess. Especially my friendships with guys. I try to be upfront. I'm not interested in a relationship. I enjoy male friends, I enjoy their company, their humor, their crazy ideas of how to define the word 'fun'. I like having guy friends. But I don't like my relationships to get complicated. I like them clean cut. Just friends.

Most of the time it works, if I say that upfront. "Just friends". Usually, they start to see me as one of the guys and it's not a real problem from then on out. It's true. Getting out of the friend zone is damn near impossible. Without alcohol. But that's a given. The point is, so long as I maintained the lines, so long as they stayed clear, everything stayed clean. There was no fuss, no mess. Just friends.

Yesterday... one of those friends took all of my carefully maintained lines and took my pristine little lines and muddied the hell out of them. Everything that had been clear moments before was now murky and not a single damned thing was clearly defined. 

And I loved it. I was suddenly out of control. I was suddenly free to tell the truth about how I felt. I was free to see what might be rather than force my mind to focus on the lines. It was unclear. As unclear as I felt about it. It was liberating. I could finally think. I could finally feel more than tightly controlled emotions. It could grow. It could change. 

Of course, there is always the risk that it can become rotten and stagnant. When the clear becomes muddied nothing is certain. But the tight control... I can't do it anymore. It's motivated by fear and a tendency to micromanage. Let go. Let God. Let life. Let anything other than me point me in a new direction or back through an old one. 

I don't always know best. And when someone took a risk with me, I was suddenly inspired to take a risk back. I know I'll probably get hurt. But it was a worth a shot. It was worth a try. It was worth losing control over. Because that's the real truth about clear cut lines and mud. Everything worth having or doing is worth losing your control.