the learning curve in A transparent lockbox

As I get older, many things are different to think about, feel, and look at. Even watching true crime and forensic shows has changed. When I was in my early and mid-teens, my family always had Forensic Files or The First 48 on the TV and we would watch it with fascination like we were tourists. Whenever it is on now and I watch any of it, I get so lost in thinking about what it must’ve been like for these poor people to suffer the way they did. It all seemed so fictional before, but it is tragically real and inescapable whether you’re in a metropolis or the middle of nowhere.
There is also this mindfulness that occurs more with each word I speak. Like its so fucking obvious that words are meant to convey different meanings and each one is so deliberate in a sentence, but there are just these realizations that click when I say common terms or phrases where I’m like “Well I don’t actually feel that way or mean that, so why am I using it?” I have become such a drag and bore it seems. Why do we say so many things we don’t mean?? There is an ongoing thoughtlessness where you say things, you don’t mean them, and you don’t care ever to mean anything. You think that you’re being attentive and mindful and then one day you’re just hit by a wave of understanding of why each letter is significant. Especially in the time when so many people are just using AI to speak for them, where is the soul or meaning in what you’re trying to convey??? The thought can be yours but without your words being locally harvested, what the fuck does any of it mean.
I guess what I’ve been learning is where to apply meaning and where there shouldn’t be any. Finding what should stick with you in everyday life rather than following a prescribed guideline. You can hear over and over about the truths of life, and never actually feel it. Sometimes you go through an experience and end up going “Oh fuck, that’s what they meant by that quote.” Like “Don’t live for other people” which for so long I was just like “Well obviously, gotta live for yourself.” but then in my interactions in dating and friendships, I was finally able to fully understand the depth of that and what it meant to live for others and then have to choose yourself. There are people I’ve never met who think of me unfavourably because of how I look or how I make them feel about themselves, and that is something that has skewed my perception of myself for a long time and still does a little bit. I look moderately androgynous and with that comes people who fetishize me and desire me to dress and act in certain ways to get them off, and on the other end, some people feel I’m being deceptive because they want my body but not my face, and what does it mean about them if they want someone like me? It is so easy to get caught in the loop of contemplation for all that (as you can probably tell from my previous posts) but I only really have who I am and what I’m comfortable with as a guiding post. Why should others’ disappointment that I’m not more masculine or feminine affect me in everyday life? I have never been uncomfortable with my gender. I just am as I am really. There was never any desire to be different, I just go with what I feel. I don’t view myself as androgynous, but others have assigned that to me. There is no meaning in that for me anymore. This is all I have. An eternity with myself. I have to make that meaningful instead. Being comfortable enough to explore sides of myself that I never had before and be as unrefined as I desire to be.
These ideas have all just been plaguing me lately.