I was talking to Josh on Sunday night, running through the things that had happened since the last time we had talked, when we hit upon a truth for both of us: it’s terribly hard to let one person in on everything.

I dated Dustin for five years, loved him terribly, but still he didn’t know everything about everything. You knows more about my sex life than the guy I had sex with for the last five years. Me knows more about me intellectually than my own sister does. My brother knows absolutely nothing about my life except the breakups with my exes.

We compartmentalize to protect ourselves. If no one knows everything, then it’s almost like everyone knows nothing, because you need all the pieces to finish the puzzle and see the whole picture, and I’m hiding a fistful of of pieces even from myself.

Because… what if I complete the picture for someone, and they don’t like what they see? It would break my heart to be so open, so exposed, and rejected because it wasn’t at all what they expected.

I guess in a way, I’m really only giving the pieces of myself that I know particular people will understand. My English major friends get the book geek in me. My geek friends get the tech fiend, my guy friends get the coarse side, the one that’s not afraid to look stupid for a laugh.

But no one gets all of me.

The oddest part about all this compartmentalizing is that it doesn’t really matter in the long run. It doesn’t matter, really, who knows what. That’s why I don’t mind if everyone reads the blog, because this place is the place that has all the little bits and pieces of my life — it’s the inside glimpse inside my head, a snapshot of what is important to me and what I’m thinking about, what I’m comfortable sharing in my circle of friends and the entire world.

There are always going to be pieces of myself that I section off, to protect myself. I can only hope that one day I’ll find that one person who will know all of me, who I’m secure enough in telling them everything about everything.

I thought that person was Dustin, but as I look back at our relationship, I see how I still managed to keep myself separate, protect myself from… something that is completely unable to be defined.