Confessions of A Working Girl

I’m so confused. I missed my friends terribly all summer. And yet, today I decided not to see them. I could have met them for dinner, and walked to a local farmer’s market with them, but I was like “Nah, I have a paper to write.” A paper, I might point out, that I don’t know when is due, and is probably not due till tomorrow at least. It is true that I have other homework, but that isn’t due till next week.

So I’m confused with myself. Why does it seem that I get close to people a bit, then start to push them away again? And I generally don’t even realize I’m doing it until it’s done. It’s sort of unconscious then, the pushing people away. It is true that I have to make a little bit of an effort to talk to strangers, but I manage! When I need to, I can interrupt random people and ask them what they thought of convocation.

See, I work for the school paper–which I like to do–and I was supposed to cover convocation. I mean, I did! But I only got two quotes. One from a random girl I asked and one from  Vivien. I may be able to get one from my friend (one of the ones I pushed away slightly today) because she went to convocation.

Listening to the music outside, I sorta wish that I had gone with my friends. But I can’t quite convince myself to call them. Or to go down and listen to the music. One semester of psychology makes me diagnose myself as “being afraid of rejection”. But if that’s so and I know it, shouldn’t that mean that I’d work harder at it? Or…

I hate being emotional. I sit here, doubting myself, and it’s almost getting to where I can’t stand it. I know, I know, it should be easy to fix. After all, they’re my emotions right? I should be able to do something about them. But what no one seems to understand, is that I really do try to. But somehow…the emotions all twist up and then I’m lost in them, not having a clue as to what I actually feel–and of course, no idea how to deal with them.

It brings to mind the time a few years ago when I went to see a psychologist. She was not a very good one, in my opinion. Maybe what she did worked for other people, but not for me. I mean, first of all, I felt like I couldn’t tell her anything! I’ve written more in this online journal here than I’d ever told her. And, I still have a bunch of my stuffed animals from when I was little. And she was just like “Throw them out. You’re too old for that kind of stuff.”o.O My parents weren’t very happy with that either.

But anyways, what I was reminded of was that every time I came in, she’d ask me what I was feeling. And I had to look at the chart on the wall and pinpoint the exact emotions I was feeling. It was really hard, and most of the time, I missed a few. But sometimes, I wouldn’t be feeling anything. I mean, I’d be there, well aware of everything that was happening, but I wasn’t feeling anything. In a way, just like white is the absence of color, what I feel then, what I call the “blank” feeling, is the absence of emotion. The psychologist claimed that there was no such thing as the absence of emotion, that I could not possibly be feeling “blank” or “no emotion.” Considering that she seemed to be wrong about other things, I wonder if she was wrong about that as well? And if she was…why exactly do I sometimes have this “absence of emotion”, and is it in any way actually healthy?

Anyway, my friends from school are “Sai” and “Arra”. They were the ones that I didn’t go with to the farmer’s market today. I met them both last year. Sai I met during the early program that the school offers, and Arra I met at some orientation type activity soon after everyone else came back to campus. I feel bad when I end up pushing them away a little. They’re really nice people.

And they make me laugh. See, I’m a little random when I talk sometimes. So what they do, if we’re at dinner, is to build a “wall”. The wall is basically a line of salt and pepper shakers and napkin holders and plates and cups. But it “separates” me from them.  We laugh about it…especially if Arra or Sai is sitting next to me when the “wall” goes up–’cause then they’re on the ‘wrong’ side!