I Don't Know Sam. I'm a Puzzle

It has come to my attention that I am rather enigmatic. This makes me curious as it isn’t the first time it has been said to me. In fact, it was said to me years ago by another boy. I think he saw me as a sort of puzzle that he could never quite figure out, or as John Mayer put it, a maze where the walls continually change. Regardless, he would often tell me that he didn’t know what I was saying or thinking. How I had a such a different way of thinking about things and looking at the world that he didn’t understand. 

I wonder if I really am that way. The two people who said it are from two very different parts of my life and know me under two completely different sets of circumstances. In fact, one could say that I am hardly the same person any more. Yet? I still give the impression of being an enigma.

To be honest, this epithet doesn’t really bother me. I suppose that I like being a bit hard to figure out. Granted it makes life a hell of a lot harder for those around me (particularly men?). I find that I’m not completely comfortable with utter transparency. I don’t see the need to air out all of my thoughts/feelings/emotions to everyone. My friends, yes. They probably wish sometimes that I would be a little less vocal about everything, but I digress. The point is that being an enigma is comfortable to me. 

Although, i have to wonder if this is to my detriment. Is this enigmatic quality making it harder for me to meet people, to get close to them? If the whole idea is get my numbers up, wouldn’t it make that process a lot easier if I wasn’t an enigma? In some respects I’m very much what-you-see-is-what-you-get and in other respects, the opposite. After drunkenly proclaiming that one of my favorite words is “fuck” I was laughed at and told that while I may seem to be a quiet, conservative Midwest girl, I’m not at all. All in all, I have to agree with this statement. 

Do I even want to fix it? As I said, I like it. I find it comfortable. It’s how apparently I’ve lived since I was at least nineteen, if not before. Who am I kidding? I lived like that long before I was nineteen. In spite of it, however, I have plenty of healthy and fulfilling relationships. This enigmaticness doesn’t seem to bother them, or if it does, they’ve kept it to themselves. 

The question then becomes is this quality I seem to possess making it hard for me to meet a man? Or for a man to become close to me? The flip side of that is that whoever would want to be with me will have to really want it. I mean, I’m not your run of the mill chickypoo. At all. It might be hard getting there, and he will have to have the fortitude and patience to do so. One might say that in the end, this enigmatic quality,could prove to be a damn good filter.