Today's rambling: Outpouring of feelings
Written on Friday, Jun. 13, 2003 at 9:25 p.m.
while feeling a bit

Mom was at the gas station today when she heard a clackity-falling sound...and looked over to see that a T-Mobile cellular phone was lying there on her car. Not knowing where on earth it had come from, she took it home and showed it to me (once I woke up). It was the neatest thing, though much bigger than any self-respecting cellular phone of the 21st century ought to be. It even had a camera on it! I was fiddling around with it, wondering if there was any information on it that could tell us who the owner was, but all we could figure out was that the owner was of Middle-Eastern descent (judging by the picture that was on the main screen and the names that were on it, hehe). I was all worried about how we could find the owner, because I know I'd hate it if I lost my phone and didn't know whether I'd get it back or not.

But while I was in the shower, Mom called one of the numbers and found out who it belonged to: the guy next door! Y'know, the one that likes to fold laundry naked in his bedroom, with the blinds wide open? ;) Mom had ended up calling his mother, I guess, who came over and was talking to Mom outside in the stairwell when I emerged from the shower. Turns out, the woman was from India and was visiting her son...and apparently she invited me over some night to partake of Indian cuisine.

Don't get me wrong: the first-and-last time I ever had Indian food, I thought it was really yummy. But these folks are strangers, and I'm so awkward around strangers! And besides that, I can't get over the queer feeling about eating around a guy who flaunts himself while folding laundry. Hee hee...Not that I haven't been known to walk nekkid from shower to bedroom (or vice-versa), but I wouldn't let the blinds be open for all to see! At any rate, I know that shouldn't factor into his mother's hospitality...but I still can't help it. :P

Tim called me at 1:30 today and was only able to talk for 5 minutes or so because he had to get ready for work. I had to laugh, wondering why he'd called me at all if he couldn't talk all that long. But I seriously think he's starting to feel sort of paternal toward me, and while it's comforting, it's also irksome. The thought of me trying to woo Geoff while his roommate is treating me like his adopted daughter--replete with nagging and reproaching!--is incongruous and embarrassing. Here I am, trying to keep them from thinking that I'm just a young girl, and Tim abrubtly starts acting as though I'm a willful child!

I may be quite a bit younger than Geoff, but I'm not a child. At least, I'm mostly not. :P

I know Tim's good-hearted and he's not doing anything toward me out of malice, but that doesn't help matters overly much. It's like when Rilla was out on the verandah talking to Ken Ford in Rilla of Ingleside, and Susan came home and started chatting amiably to Ken about childhood stuff like past spankings. Susan thought she was helping Rilla out by sharing in entertaining a guest, but Rilla was just mortified. And I halfway feel like that, too!

But at the same time, as much as I struggle to make people think I'm capable, I can't help that little voice that whispers in my mind, "You're still just a baby!" I have to be practically pushed to do new things that scare me. And anything that's new scares me. With college, I had to wait until I couldn't take home life anymore before I went...and it's not that I'm sorry I waited, but nobody else let themselves stay home because such a drastically new environment scared them!

I haven't bothered with getting my driver's license because, especially after that first test, I'm terrified to go back. I told Mom quite firmly after that day that I would never go back to take my test again. Oh, I know that very few people pass their driver's test on the first try, but that doesn't help me get past my humiliation over it. Dad once boasted that he made it on his first try, and ever since then I've felt the pressure of being just as good as him. I can't bear to do things wrong. I have some kind of fixation with making people thing I'm...not perfect, of course, but something close to it. I won't put myself out on a limb, won't do anything that might possibly make me look ridiculous...I mean sheesh, I had to get completely inebriated before I could even let myself get up and dance! I don't even dance in private, because I feel like unseen eyes are watching me and laughing derisively at me!

So maybe that's the big reason why Tim's good-natured fathering rubs me the wrong way. It's because he's making me realize I'm nowhere near as grown-up as I try to pretend. And until I can get over all this and go out and do those things that are holding me back, I probably never will feel better about the way he acts toward me. One of my biggest fears at the moment is that Geoff might have that same big brotherly instinct when it comes to me. That would just break my heart. To be reconciled to friendship status for the rest of my life would be bearable. But to be looked at like a kid sister? I would hate that.

Tim asked me today if I liked hiking at all, because apparently there's this place a few hours from here that he and Geoff have been to several times. It's a great big waterfall or some such, and you have to hike downhill first, then back up again. Tim informed me that I'd have to wear shorts and carry a backpack and all that, and that was all it took for me to say, "Well, take some nice pictures for me when you go!"

Had it been Amanda or Lauren, or even Kevin who'd asked me, I would have fairly jumped at the chance. I never feel that I have to 'impress' them, and so wearing shorts--something I am absolutely LOATH to do...I didn't even wear them in the sweltering humidity of Florida--wouldn't be so big a thing. But with Geoff and Tim...oh, I know it's silly of me to need to impress them, or whatever it is that keeps me from just letting go and not caring. They'd like me much better if I could do that, I know. But it's like I just freeze up whenever either of them is around, and I always have to behave a certain way and never do anything that could possibly make me look like an idiot. Wearing shorts, to my highly self-conscious mind, would make me look like an idiot. I can just see myself, with those glaringly white legs that are way too flabby above the knee...They'd never be able to get me out of the car. Tim joked that if "two fat old men can do it" so can I, but that's not my fear. Heck, I wouldn't mind a good romp in the forest! I might be out of shape, but I'd feel so great after it was done! But I just cannot bring myself to let go of my self-consciousness and don a pair of shorts. The simplest thing in the world! I'd be more comfortable if I'd done it once before (the hiking, I mean) and at least knew what to do and what to expect. But all these new things all at once? I'm nervous just thinking about it.

This entry is sounding pathetically self-pitying, I know. I didn't mean for it to get that way, but it all just seemed to pour out at once. Mom doesn't really seem to get it...She just thinks I need to "let myself go" more and stop being so rigid and quiet. It's the same traits she says she saw in Dad, what with the way he'd "never let himself have fun". What she doesn't seem to realize is that she's as good as telling me that I need to change myself. Why do I need to be loud and bawdy just to have a good time? As I tried to impress upon Pam, I don't need to be at the fore in order to have fun. I can have more fun just sitting around a restaurant table chatting than I would in a crowded club dancing and being loud. Just a few nights ago, we were looking through our Epcot pictures and I laughingly said that, in the picture of me and the lead singer of The Buckinghams, we actually looked somewhat related. Mom's response? Something along the lines of "You look so pretty when you finally let loose."

????????

First of all, what the hell did that have to do with what I'd just said? There's very little that grates on me more than when she gives a response that's completely unrelated to what I've just said. It's like that horrid joke Lauren told once: "How many retards does it take to screw in a light bulb? I like potatoes!" Sorry for that particular example, but that's how I feel half the time with Mom. It's like she isn't even listening to me anymore. She hears that I'm talking, but she doesn't listen. And when I finally get cross enough to tell her that she doesn't even understand where I'm coming from, she swears that she does.

But then why would she keep making such remarks? I felt a little wounded, truthfully, when she said that. It was as though she was telling me I'm not pretty at any other time. And I know she never meant it that way, but at the same time she didn't think about what she was saying.

*sigh* I'm sorry! I really was in a better mood than this entry suggests! But ever since all this poured out, I'm just thinking about all the things I need to fix in my life. I'm starting on one part, at least: I'm going to the doctor on the 20th, both to get my ear checked out and to get the DMV's physical form re-filled out. After that, I will make myself practice driving again, because I'm tired of being a prisoner "of my own device".

Maybe once I gain my confidence, in slow little increments, I won't be so terrified to try new things anymore. At least, one can hope so.