I have a hard time opening up to people, online or in person it doesn’t seem to matter.  I have only very few close friends because of this.  Chosen carefully, and proven over time.  The problem with this is that it’s unintentional.  Inside this melancholy exterior, I’m a happy-go-lucky people person who enjoys the limelight at times.

I think in a conversation with my wife last night I finally figured out where a lot of this outward discontent with life comes from.  I know I don’t show so much of it online which is probably part of my gaurded complex.

I am a control hound, freak, whatever you want to call it.

This probably is easiest to see in the way I handle gifts in both giving and recieving.  See I have a hard time accepting a gift like money when it is given because I am in need.  But, if someone were to ask me for help in some way, I am the first person to give if I have the means and often when I don’t.

The reason I don’t accept is that in some way in my head it is giving that person control over me to accept the gift.  I usually have to be desperate to accept.  Then I long to repay the gift at the first opportunity.  I can’t seem to be just grateful for what is given.

As much as I hate to say it, I think I’ve been approaching God this way too.

Unfortunately, it goes the other way too for me.  When I give a gift, subconsciouly I feel like the gift reciever is indebted to me.  A favor that I could call  in.  It’s twisted I know.

So I am going to do something unprecedented for me.  Release these people from their supposed indebtedness.  I don’t think they will ever know, but somewhere deep inside of me I am relinquishing control, letting go.  A different kind of forgiveness.