Why?

I have always struggled with trying to fully articulate the thoughts in my head into actual cogent speech people around me could understand. The more strongly I feel on the topic the more difficult it is to coax anything out of my bumbling and clumsy mouth. I find the best way to avoid these embarrassing verbal slip ups is to preempt a serious discussion with a joke and quickly change the subject. For most people I interact with on a casual basis this is enough to appease them but for those who know me they recognize the pattern all too well and always find a way to approach the subject again.

I guess it started innocently enough with me bitching about not wanting to drink anymore alcohol because the last 3 nights in a row have left me with this odd notion that my kidneys were actually in pain and crying out for a reprieve. So we stayed in, smoked a couple of bowls, and watched some movies. When the movies were done we flipped through the channels until we ran into my big fat head on the screen. It was one of my interviews from a few months ago being replayed on a recap for the tour, so began the razzing…

In the end it always ends with the same question, “why do you have such a problem with fame?”. I guess at some point or another all 3 of my friends have asked me this, but I always did what I do and made a joke about it, or stuttered through some incoherent explanation that I didn’t even understand. But I have been thinking about this a lot lately, because in one form or another, this keeps on coming up! Whether it be from one of them asking me or one of my million other friends, everybody wants to know WHY!? Even Matt @ DTB got in on the action the other day with his “WHY?” and like always the best I could come up with was “errr I dunno I just didn’t like it or something…”

I guess what I am doing now is trying to put into words what this icky feeling in my heart and this lump in my throat really mean. GOD DAMN THIS IS HARD! The most difficult thing to explain is how I can be so outgoing and popular but at the same time totally hate attention from strangers. Let’s face facts, I am an attention whore but at the same time I want to decide when I get that attention and who is giving it to me. One of the most uncomfortable moments of my life was when this guy walked up to me, introduced himself, then told me where I went to HS, who I surf for, what my shoe size was, and when my birthday is! I don’t mind telling anybody any of this information, but it’s mine to share and until I share it having strangers know about me makes me feel violated! But that’s only part of it…

I don’t know how to explain how I like who I am and I like the guy I see in the mirror, but the guy I see on print or on TV kind of freaks me out. That guy I am out there in the public is the guy they tell me to be. He’s the guy I have to be because I am too scared to be the man I really am and I don’t see that ever changing. My life is my own, does it really make me a coward for not wanting to share it with everybody?

There it is. That's my problem. Or problems. I think... I am sooo not rereading this to try and figure out if I did in fact make any sense what so ever.