We spend much of our lives practicing our social skills and we’ve been conditioned, in some ways, to think that there’s a time and a place for everything we could possibly want to say. We’re concerned about how others might react if we let them know how we feel in what we perceive as the wrong context. So we hold it all in. And, as a result, we will never say the wrong thing at the wrong time—we will never have moments of awkwardness. We can avoid those moments that can seem devastating when they happen…

But we also miss out on the chance to connect with people. We miss out on the chance to tell others how they’ve affected our lives. We miss out on the chance that they might feel the same way about us. There are so many things that we choose to keep to ourselves; things that we’re sometimes dying to share with others and… I don’t know, I just think that it’s a tragedy that we choose not to. And I think it’s a tragedy that this choice is almost a knee-jerk reaction because we live in a society where we prefer to be ignorant if the truth doesn’t confirm something we already want to hear.

That’s really what my story is about. It’s what my life’s been about, really: treading the line between being honest about my feelings and following acceptable social protocol.