If you've spent fifteen minutes talking to me, you know I'm perky, vivacious, and, at times, silly. If you've spent any considerable time with me, then you also know that I'm all about intensity.
Intensity is a good thing. When one is intense, one tends to live life to the fullest and to want it all.
I've had some people who couldn't handle the intensity, and they walked out of my life. Probably better for all around, but it still hurt. And there is fear around my propensity to be intense and if it might be too much for people. A fear that people will leave.
(There is a point, and it actually has to do with writing. We'll get there soon, I promise.)
I was explaining this fear to someone the other day, and I used the metaphor of a sun. Here's what I wrote:
It's as if my intensity is a sun. I'm afraid I'll be so intense that those people in my life will be afraid they'll burn, and they'll leave. Sometimes the risk of getting hurt is a little too much to bear. If the sun could change orbit, she might. But she can't - or, more accurately, she chooses not to. And she just hopes that it all works out and that she doesn't get hurt.
So I wrote that and sent it off. And I thought about it and thought about it.
Know what I came up with?
The fact that the sun doesn't orbit. Planets orbit around a sun. The sun itself doesn't orbit.
All that hard work coming up with a metaphor, and it was flawed. I still like the metaphor, and it accurately describes what I feel at times. But only I would fixate on the metaphor I used and go back and worry it like a bone.
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