Warning, Blood and Guts in the Morning

I was warned, time and again, in a zillion different ways, and I heeded in my own shade, but did I really understand what it was they were warning me about? A million different ways, a million different opinions and a million different faces, all saying, all telling me the same thing. Be careful. Of what? It never really registered until now. Be careful of people. Be careful of their eyes, and their judgements, however uninformed they are, their opinions are what count. If you want to survive that is. If you want to be able to live as any other normal human being does without harm, not physical harm, just harm, harm, harm, then you must follow the rules. They are not written. You cannot go and buy a manual. You cannot go and study them in the library. They are passed down from one generation to the next. To the chosen few. They are like a sacred text that is only ever discussed in cavernous intimacy while the world sleeps. I digress, surely I am making excuses, surely I was warned enough times, surely I had enough lessons. Did I just choose to ignore what I had been given of advice? Was my optimistic nature just too downright ignorant to understand? To realise, to register, do I always have to take the hard way and learn the bitter lesson for myself?