Illusions and Perceptions

I thought of how I am the same consciousness that was born into this body 25 years ago. And yet I feel completely different now. I know I'm the same consciousness simply because of my memories...but it is almost like the memories of some other person since I see the world through a different lenses now. We are like flowers...yet sometimes it feels like I opened too soon and my edges are already beginning to wilt. You can't see it on the inside...it's something I feel inside. Like I'm spread out too thin.
Cesar said I was more open with him when I wasn't dating him - I said that maybe I didn't want him to see everything now. I wanted him to like me. Then he said how will he know me otherwise. and I said not everything is appropriate for me to share and so he said, yeah, like a man on the side.
That's why I don't want to share everything with him...he's uber sensitive and takes things personally and then lashes out.
I do feel lonely. I had promised myself I'd never let myself become closed off from people and now it's sort of just naturally happened. I've stopped trying to share every piece of me with the world. It's not that I can't have intimacy...just not every piece of me with another human. Truth is...even I don't know every piece of me. That longing for someone truly see me is rather strange when even I can't truly see me. I think that's what cuts so deep...is that for so long I've felt like I'm not really real. I'm not an actual person. I think that's what I connect so much with Alan Watt's teaching because it's a much more positive take on it than the void and meaninglessness that I have felt from that sense of reality. 
I identified as the shining light within myself...the beacon holder of my dreams and overall the best parts of me (in my understanding of myself). Now I see there is so much more to me and lots of it feels like a stranger to me. I feel like a stranger to myself the more I grow up...such an odd feeling...to see you know less and less about yourself and who you really want to be and what life is all about.