About a year ago, a girl was trying to give me a compliment, in it she said the thing she liked about me most was that I didn't give a shit what people thought about me.

I was taken aback, because it seems to me, all I do is care what people think about me. I wish that wasn't the case.

She seemed to think it was cool that in a crowd or mixed company I would say whatever was the first thing on my mind regardless of how shocking it might be.

Little does she realize the pain it causes me. I think I'm on the border of having Tourette's Syndrome.

All these years being behind a microphone and I still have heart palpitations because something inside me wants me to flip on the on-air switch and belt out a stream of expletives.

When I am whizzing into the toilet of a public restroom, I have to fight the urge to pull out a pen or take my keys and scratch some dirty words on the wall.

When I answer the phone and it's the telemarketer, sometimes I stretched the call out and keep them going until they give up, I wear them down.

I am so easily influenced by others opinions. Even the opinions of people I couldn't give two shits about.

I had gone out with an actress who had done a few fairly popular movies, but had begun expressing herself through painting. I went to a gallery showing of her work and really enjoyed what I was seeing. I wanted to help her out, so I had invited some friends to help make that showing a little more crowded.

When she wasn't standing next to me, my friends began snickering about what a poor artist she was. They made fun of her paintings.

Later in her apartment we drank wine and listened to music, but I was uneasy. I felt that I may have joined in and was making fun of her behind her back. I didn't want to think that I could be like that, so instead, I began in my mind finding fault with her talents.

Of course, all this was racing through my mind as she was trying to take my pants down. I was ashamed and embarrassed of my feelings, so I made excuses for reasons why I had to leave.

Over the next few weeks she had made numerous calls, but I never returned them.

I hated myself for this and other reasons.

Another time, at a radio station I worked on, we began playing a song by a local artist who came on my show to do an acoustic set. We had fun on the air. And when you host a show, sometimes you and the guest get a little silly and began flirting with each other on the air.

About a month later I ran into her and her bass player at a restaurant. They sat down with me, I was alone as usual and the three of us had a great conversation. The bass player said he had to leave, but if I could give her a ride home that would be great for him.

I wouldn't say we began dating, but for the next few weeks her voice was the last voice I would hear on the phone before going to sleep and the first voice I wanted to hear on the phone in the morning, but I had to get up at 3:00 a.m. every morning.

We saw a lot of each other.

It was kind of fun to be a morning radio personality and dating the singer of a band that we played! When we were out on the town or on the streets and people saw us holding hands, it was kind of a cool feeling.

There was a concert were about four bands were playing on one stage. It was an all ages show. About 10 that morning, she found out that her mother had died.

I still hadn't gotten over the death of my own mother and I guess I wasn't in a place where I wanted to feel sad. I believe I pretended to be busy and unavailable to her grief.

She still went on with the show, but was drunk. I was told she had been drinking all day and well into the night.

She's slurred her way through the songs. Forgot lyrics. Dropped the microphone several times. I couldn't watch anymore and I left the show.

At work, I heard that she later even fell off the stage.

People at work were laughing about it. People were laughing at her. Parents were complaining because she was performing at an all ages concert drunk, Then we stopped playing the band's song.

I remember laying on my futon holding a stick of incense and slowly burning holes with it, through pages of a love letter I had written to her earlier, but had never given.

It was raining outside and there were two streams of raindrops hitting the metal box of my air-conditioner that sounded like a broken heart.

Yesterday, at lunch I was talking to a woman older than me that worked where I was eating. I've only seen her maybe four times before, but as with many people, she felt comfortable enough with me to spill out her emotions.

She was telling me about being divorced in her late 20s and how she never dated anyone after, because she did not want to feel love.

Then she said, that one day she realized she was almost 50 and had no husband and no children to love her. She wanted to know who was going to love her, who was going to take care of her...

I got so sad listening to her. She apologized and walked back into the kitchen as I'd poked at the cold food with my fork.

I looked around the restaurant and everyone that was eating there was alone, just like me.