Friday 16 May 2008

Aloofness, And All That Jazz

My favourite song in the world is Bruce Springsteen's "Born to Run", and that's not a coincidence.

I'm not sure when my almost compulsive need for privacy and control over my own life came into being. Probably it was there all along. My Mom tells me I was a classic Indigo Child; intelligent, caring but distant, energetic but always serene, "knowing" to the point where I scared adults, because I looked at them and saw straight through all the surface stuff. I can neither agree nor disagree on this score, since I didn't start analysing myself until I was 8 or 9. But one thing I can say for certain is that I was always the horse in the granite (to use a Maine-ish saying that I'm quite fond of). Always everyone's mother - even my Mom's at times. Always the one who looked after everyone, always the comforter, always the one who kept control of herself. I can remember maybe ten or twelve occasions in twelve years of childhood where I cried.

Some of the reasons for this are obvious. My parents lost my brother Michael when I was a toddler. They were separated; had been for several years, and my two brothers lived with my Dad, so my Mom was pretty much alone after he died. If she hadn't had me, she wouldn't have survived - and that's not melodrama, that's a simple fact. She told me enough times throughout my childhood.

So anyway, I went through my first twelve years being everyone's caretaker, and somehow most of my own troubles got pushed to the side. This was easy enough to do, because until I got sick, I didn't really HAVE troubles. I was a very very happy child. Mom getting together with Brian (who wasn't quite sure what to do with me at the time) was the worst thing I ever had to go through, and although I was admittedly quite bratty about not having her attention 24-7, it wasn't a huge crisis.

Teenage years were harder. I got hepatitis, which turned into ME, and although for the first time I was the one who needed people to help me, there wasn't much point in asking for it; nobody believed I was ill anyway. That was probably when I learned that I had to take care of myself (emotionally, anyway, and physically in some areas) because nobody else was going to. And over the span of my teenage years, I dealt with whatever life chose to throw at me - a painful illness, a boyfriend who tried his best to get me addicted to drugs and subsequently killed himself, various minor crises - and always did it alone. Being an incredibly stubborn person helped; after the age of about 15, I learned that I actually preferred being happy to being depressed and nihilistic, and my stubbornness allowed me to cling to happiness, tooth and claw.

I've given you the highlights, but it actually happened very gradually. And that gradual-ness has made it difficult to see where my tendency towards aloofness actually became a compulsion. But whenever the change occurred, here I am at the ripe old age of 24, happy (most of the time anyway), generally wholesome and healthy emotionally - but completely incapable of giving up control, even to the people I love.

I have family that I get on with well enough. I have friends, a couple of them close. What I don't have, and if things stay this way will NEVER have, is a significant other. Oh, don't get me wrong. I date. I've had boyfriends. I've even been in love. But they don't last. Because sooner or later, whether it's a couple weeks or months or a year into the relationship, I get itchy, and then I run. Because I have this ridiculous need for emotional distance, at all costs. Even if it costs everything.

When I was 18-19, I dated Richard. I loved Richard with every fibre of my being. I'd never been so deeply in love before. But with him, I fell so hard I got tunnel vision. He was my universe. I didn't care about college. I didn't care about seeing my friends. I still did the things that I considered "responsibilities": I attended classes, I worked, I visited Zia in the hospital. But I couldn't think of anything but getting home and being with him. Even Curt, who was undoubtedly my best friend and who I'd had a huge passion for previously (although we never got together - bad timing) didn't hold much interest for me.

And it terrified the hell out of me. So I left.

Not physically. I was still there. But I distanced myself. And that hurt him a great deal. He couldn't understand why I was being so cruel, and I couldn't explain it to him, because I didn't really understand it myself. If I could talk to him now, I still don't know what I would say, beyond telling him that there was never anything wrong with him, that it was never about him not being good enough. It's just...me. You hear that all the time - "It's not you, it's me." And usually it means, "You're a great person, but not the right one for me." Yet what scares me is the idea that maybe one of the ones I pushed away WAS the right person, and I wouldn't let myself see it.

When Curt and I tried to get together, I did the same thing. Different things, but all the same in the end. With Curt, my problem was not so much with distance as with self-control, and my inability to show when I was hurt or needy. Sometimes I got the impression that towards the end of our "relationship", he actually did things to deliberately hurt me, out of this desperate need to elicit a reaction from me. When I consider that the whole 4th of July mess - and everything that followed it - could maybe have been prevented if I just let myself show that I cared, that I wasn't completely indifferent to the things he did (whether good or bad)...well, that just breaks my heart. Not because I still love or want Curt, but because I know the pain that everyone - not just me - went through, and I wish that I'd prevented that.

Or at least I wish I'd tried.

It amazes me that I run from relationships, because I don't run from anything else. Ever. I'm tough, emotionally and physically. People don't always see this, because I'm generally such a sunny happy person, and I look like a fluffy marshmallow. But just about any other situation I can face head-on. Even when Obie raped me I didn't panic and fall apart. Although possibly that too is due to my extreme self-control, who knows. But whenever something goes wrong, I grit my teeth and set my jaw and face it like the granite that I am. And usually, I do it not just with courage, but with grace and humour. Most everything that happens, I manage to retain my inner joy, as ridiculously new-age as that sounds.

At the end of Christopher Pike's book "Sati", the book I was named after, it says of the title character, "Some might say she was indifferent. I know now her ocean of joy was simply too vast to be disturbed by any one wave." Which is all great when you're a girl who thinks she is (or maybe IS?) God. But I'm not, I'm just an average girl who has friends and boyfriends and needs to learn how to let them close.

The thing that brought this whole long post on was my horoscope today. It said:

No one feels comfortable sharing intimate details with a snob. Even though you hope people trust you enough to reveal any relationship insecurities they might have, you sometimes come across as aloof. Show your softer side.

And I thought, could this BE any more accurate?

I know that I have to learn how to be vulnerable, because it hurts people that I don't. It certainly hurts guys who want to know that they're needed.

But I don't seem to know how.

*sigh* I need to think about this some more. I don't know why I wrote this all here. Sometimes it just helps to get your thoughts out, I guess. So all I ask of you guys is to keep it in the back of your mind that I DO care about you a great deal, and although I may not *need* you - or may not appear to - you certainly make my world a lot better.

Monday 12 May 2008

News for April and May

This is basically just a catch-up. Oaklands still hasn't got their journal section up and running, although it always says "soon" (I'm hoping they haven't lost my year of journal entries; I shall have to get in touch with Mark Little soon to check), and I still haven't signed up with a different site, although I'm leaning towards livejournal. I know I want something that isn't going to close down; I had a bolt journal for four years, even won awards (well, little badge thingies) for it, and then the site went under. So I started a journal on the college site, and then THAT stopped working, so I'm hoping this third time will be lucky, and I'll actually be able to KEEP the journal instead of building up a reader base and then losing them when the site suddenly stops being there, with no warning.

Which is why I'm thinking carefully before I commit to a new one.

So anyway, in the interim - and maybe for a long time, who knows - this note place [Facebook] is functioning as a journal for the random thoughts / recipes / quotes / rantings / general news of moi. For a long time my notes were private, but since someone hacked my file and made them public without my knowledge, the only two people in the world I care about keeping my thoughts away from have already read everything I have to say. And since not writing in here - or keeping it private - would now be an exercise in futility equal to latching the barn door once the horse is already out...well, I figure I may as well use it, since it's here and all.

Bear in mind, though: this IS my journal, and if you're expecting me to apologize for anything in here, you'll be waiting a long time.

And with the disclaimers done, here's the news from my life for the last couple of weeks.

- We got a lodger, Nutan, and she was with us for about three weeks before she decided to leave. I'm not quite sure what to say about her, really. My initial response wasn't terribly favourable; she came to visit the room, said she wanted to move in, and after Mom had reserved it for her, begged us to lower the rent by £50 a month. Not exactly the best way to start things - why would you commit to a room that you can't afford, when the price is stated quite clearly on the inital advertisement, and then you're told it AGAIN before you make your decision? And £350 a month, all bills and council tax included, is a damn cheap rent for this area anyway, which made it all the more cheeky.

So I was thinking that she was one of those annoying manipulative girls, but then she moved in and I found I liked her quite a lot. She was very sweet. Kind of clingy, but very sweet. And then about ten days ago she told mom that her friend was coming to stay, and she'd be living here for the next couple of months. And of course Mom said, hell no. (Although a bit more politely than that.) Four adults and a dog in a three-bedroom house is a tight squeeze. Five adults and a dog is impossible. She can stay for a week, and that's it. So then Nutan said OK, well in that case I'm moving out. And that was that, basically.

So we're back to me, Mom, dog and Ali, the Turkish guy who's been living here since a couple of weeks before Martin left. Martin, who was living here since last summer, is now a guest of Her Majesty's Prison Service, after doing some very naughty things that I'm not allowed to tell you about because of the Data Protection Act. But anyway, Ali's been here since about January, and aside from him perving at me every time I see him and making weird noises in the back of his throat when I show any skin (even below the knee), he's an okay lodger. Well, as far as lodgers go. He doesn't steal my stuff, he doesn't have loud parties all night, he doesn't do anything violent or hostile. (So far.) He's not the cleanest person in the world, but he's not the dirtiest either, and I can deal with cleaning the kitchen and bathroom after he's used them.

But we need another lodger, at least until Mom's money from work is sorted out (they've underpaid her SSP for the last several months), so here goes yet ANOTHER round of interviews, most of whom are likely to be totally unsuitable.


- I finally signed up for my free supply of The Pink Patch, after seeing all those annoying skinny ads on here, and I got it in the mail the other day. I'm on my second day of patches, and I'm not sure if I feel any difference, but I figure I'll try for a month and see how it goes. Supposedly it makes you less hungry, and also ups your metabolism so you burn three times the fat you do normally. Not sure if I buy all the hype, but there's no harm in trying. (Except to my bank balance, and that hasn't been healthy for a while - I just need to take another couple of jobs with Kell.) And frankly, I'm willing to try just about anything to shift the fat, as long as it doesn't involve nausea or throwing up.


- The weather's been glorious now for the best part of a week. We had a couple of days of blue skies with no clouds, and hot hot sun. One day it got to 37 degrees C, according to several different thermometers around the house. Then we had two days of hot but humid weather, with a haze that blocked the sun, but today was sunny and blue again. I've spent most of my mornings lying in the garden, reading and listening to Springsteen, and my afternoons bathing and napping, or getting some work done lying on my bed in my nice cool (and clean! I cleaned!) bedroom. For ten days or so I've been sleeping at night (after several months of not being able to, during which I ended up working all night and sleeping all day) - and even turning the light off for the first time in about a year. Hopefully my melatonin production will kick in again.

I even have tan lines. They're faint, but they're there. I haven't had tan lines since summer of 2006, when I burned so badly. God bless string bikinis.


- Annoyingly, I seem to have grown recently. I can't say HOW recently; I haven't measured myself since last September, so I know it was since then. But the lilac and white flowery sundress that was knee-length last summer (and calf-length when I bought it) is now halfway up my thigh. It's actually not a bad length, at least it won't be when I'm more used to the bare-all ethos of summer. And calf-length certainly doesn't suit me, my legs are much too short. But the idea that I've grown at least an inch since this time last year...well, I'm not overly happy about that. For one thing, it's WEIRD. Girls just aren't supposed to grow taller at my age. I'm 24, for pete's sake, not 14. I'm not sure how tall I am now, since I don't have any way to measure it here, but I have a sinking feeling that I may now be taller than Oli. I don't know why that bothers me, but it just does.


I'm trying to think if there's any other news. Lodger, weather, tan, sleep, growing...that's basically it, really. I've been watching Hotel Babylon, which is as addictive as the first episode was. I had a couple of dates with various guys I met, but I don't think anything will come of any of them. Mom's hoping to go back to work in a month or so, and that would be a good time for me to get a proper job, if I can find one. Not that I'm desperate; the work I do now pays the bills and bank loan, but it would be nice to be able to afford my own place once mom's better, and live the yuppie life that I yearn for.