Day 6531 | Day 6536 | Day 6547

As a disclaimer this is almost entirely a GTKY node. I mostly wrote it as personal reflections but things kept on flowing so I kept on typing. Just as a warning, it turned out the be a lot longer than I originally thought it would be so unless you're really interested in my life and my self-examinations, I'd recommend you turn back here.

Woke up, fell out of bed, dragged a comb across my head. I talked with a guy across the hall on the way to my economics class. He actually shares a room with his identical twin brother which makes things rather interesting when they have visitors. I've known several pairs of identical twins in my schooling and I have to admit that the evil twin cliché definitely has some merit in my experience. One twin always seems to be friendlier and happier than the other. I suppose that's a bit of an unfair assessment but I've found it to be more accurate than not. It's always a test of my interpersonal skills to deal with people who seem so similar but actually are quite different.

I'm told time and time again that I have great interpersonal skills but I actually think the exact opposite. I am very much able to communicate things but I always feel like an outsider or like I don't really relate to people very much. I describe people as my friends but I just don't feel like they really fill that definition. The people I know here are mostly just some people I hang out with; I don't really consider them friends. Admittedly, I'm a person who is very slow to trust. I only consider someone a friend when I trust them completely: I can count the number of people I would consider friends on one hand. I suppose I could be classified as a loner. Last year, my Dad was laid off from the company he'd been working at for the last 20 years. There aren't too many pharmaceutical jobs in the midwest so he moved to work in New Jersey while my mom and I stayed so I could graduate high school. When we went out to visit him this summer, he admitted to me that he enjoyed family life but that he wasn't having too much trouble being happy living on his own too. It's not that he doesn't love our family, it's more that he's a lot more comfortable with isolation than most.

I think that should be added to the list of ways in which I'm similar to my father. My dad and I weren't always close. There was a period of a few years between when I was about 10 and 15 that I really resented him. He was always asking questions which bugged the hell out of me at the time even though it definitely taught me not to just do but also to think about what I was doing. But he would also read to my brother and I on long car trips and before we went to sleep. Sometimes it would be children's books like The Boxcar Children but other times he would pick a book himself. I have fond memories of laying in my room listening to him reading to us from 2001 and 2010 by Arthur C. Clarke. He pitched baseball for us to play in our front yard and always fished them out of the sewer when they rolled into the road. When I got older he would discuss politics with me, having conversations in the car while we listened to stories on NPR. I think the conflict we went through when I was younger was mostly because of how similar we are. We both are pretty libertarian in our viewpoints, both are stubborn at times, and both have a self-righteous streak. I would later find out that we have the same taste in music and have the same issues with confidence.

When we were younger and we went out for our parents' anniversary dinner, my brother and I would always demand to hear the story of how they first met. So the story goes, my parents shared the same chemistry class together in college. One day my mom asked the "cutest guy in class to walk me back to my dorm", that being my dad. As these stories go, one thing led to another and pretty soon they were married. It was only recently that I realized that my mom made the first move. I guess my dad wasn't the most up front guy back in the day. It's weird being able to relate to your parents in that kind of way. Sort of like in Back to the Future where Marty McFly gets to hang out with his parents for a week when he goes back in time to their high school. Maybe it's that I'm getting to the age where people are getting comfortable with their personality and start to get settled in their self-image but more and more I'm seeing adults several times older than myself acting in the same way I do with my friends.

As a teenage male I'm entitled to my fair share of thought about sex. The college atmosphere is a pleasant change from high school as far as dating is concerned; not that I went on any dates in high school. High school is filled with the adolescent machismo and homophobia that defines high school culture. Being in a relationship was more often about status than mutual caring and sex was a trophy, not an act of love. In college, everyone is much more relaxed with each other, part of which probably comes from the fact that I live in a mixed gender dorm. For the first time, I'm friends with girls while at the same time having no romantic interest in them. I see it as being friends with a person, regardless of gender. The advice I've heard and read says that I should "play the field" and not focus on only one girl. This seems like it advocates settling for less than the girl of your dreams and I don't want to get involved with someone when she might be my second choice. It wouldn't be fair to her and it wouldn't be fair to myself.

And so I return to thoughts about my supposedly good interpersonal skills even though I'm terrible at reading people. In the past I have managed to convince myself that some girls who are interested in me actually aren't and that some girls who aren't interested actually are. I think back to when I wrote Sometimes, all you can be is a friend and I realized that she probably was interested in me during high school and I simply never had the balls to make a move. What I didn't write in that node was that she'd run her fingers through my hair during the math class I sat in front of her. That she let me put my arm around her hip when we would walk. I guess I must have been oblivious to the signs.

My hair didn't used to be curly; it used to be fairly straight. But about two years ago it turned incredibly curly and defied any attempts to comb it. My mom half-jokingly told me that it was the kind of hair that girls love to run their fingers through. Now that I think about it, all the girls I've ever had a crush on ran their fingers through my hair at least once. Maybe that's the something that I'm missing, a sort of litmus test. I bring this up because today the particular girl I'm interested in at the moment—for the heart is a fickle thing—tousled my hair as a greeting. I suppose she is interested in me: she hung around with me inexplicably one weekend and always says hi to me, she tousles my hair and rubbed my back when I was laying on the ground recovering from a manly paintball injury. I don't know though; I can't seem to make her laugh like other people can and I'm terrible at the whole touch is the language of lovers thing. I don't want anything big really, I just need a hug, is all. I keep on thinking that I should go to her room and just talk to her. But then I manage to convince myself that it would just make the situation awkward for the both of us. I yearn (that's not a word I use often) to simply be able to tell her how I feel and for her to simply accept things but courtship is never that easy. Which reminds me:

I'm also a compulsive planner. When I was a kid, my dad would always ask me questions: his favorite was "what's your plan?". Perhaps it's a compulsion he passed on to me or one that we both share but I think that's why I've had so much trouble in the romance department. I have trouble because I am daunted by the idea of planning an entire relationship. I'm terrified of running out of ideas for dates or of being incompatible in politics or religion or even music with a girl. I think about having a relationship and I manage to convince myself that somehow it will fail no matter what; that I'm being too optimistic and that realistically I won't get it right.

I manage to put up a nonchalant exterior despite my huge insecurities like this. I'm always making jokes because if I make fun of myself I control the insults instead of leaving myself open to the lancing laughter of others. For the most part, things roll off my back to begin with but sometimes comments will slowly fester inside of me, so that I lay awake at night scolding myself over what was probably a side comment. Then I scold myself for scolding myself because it's only being human. No matter how much I tell that to myself, however, it never seems to help.

If you've managed to make it this far, congratulations; you deserve a gold star! As I said above, this writing is more for me than you, the readers, so downvote away.