Fooded.

[swestrup]

This started as a (not so) simple post about the party and has mutated into a major piece of introspection. As such, it got rather long, and likely rather boring. Still...

So, I fooded myself at the very Hosty (oops, is that an insult here???) denizsarikaya's place today. Me and taxlady had much good eats and good conversations. In fact, it was so much fun, and there was so much food left over that we've all been invited back tomorrow for more of the same. As for the attendees:

azrhey was noticable for her absense, and I hope someone has had the sense to tell her the party is continuing on Sunday, in case she can make it then.

In the ranks of the actually there, I saw B_THE_H for the first time in donkeys, and who both did and did not claim to have an LJ account during the munch. I'm guessing NOT. Also not having LJ accounts were K and M. K did massive amounts of cooking and seemed embarrased when we pointed out the wonderful job she did. On the other hand, I couldn't draw her out on any subject not involving the kitchen :-/. M was a conundrum wrapped in an enigma of a riddle. He is apparantly THE laconic Aussie. I say "THE" since statistics seem to indicate it rather unlikely that there are ANY such creatures, and monstrously improbable that there could be more than one.

Everyone else had LJ accounts, although I didn't find out what the account name of 'C' was. C seemed to be very dapper (he was by far the best dressed there), well educated, and thoroughly strange. All in all, a good combination. The only other person there I didn't know was somecanuckchick who I found to be ... well, I was going to say 'Major Babe' here, but that (while true) doesn't quite have the right connotations. 'Someone who I could seriously fall for if not careful' is perhaps a more accurate statement.

It turns out that while *I* didn't know somecanuckchick at all, a friend of mine (who probably prefers not to be named, so I won't) has had some sort of online disagreement with her in the past, and seems to have had a much larger disagreement with a friend of hers. Now, interestingly enough, my take on the situation was "Oh goody, it sounds like it was all just a big case of miscommunication, bad timing and grouchiness. This is a chance to get it all cleared up and heal some old wounds." Meanwhile my friend's reaction seems to have been "Yipes! These are real people with actual points of view, and they had an argument with ME. Maybe I'm actually a horrible ogre who needs to go and live in a hole in the forest and eat bugs. I'm gonna avoid these folks from now on." Now I'll be the first to admit that I may be a bit naive socially, and it wasn't MY flamewar, but this does not appear to be a contructive reaction. Still, to each our own quirks.

And speaking of *my* quirks (a subject on which I am vastly more knowledgable), I've had this theme in my LJ posts that I very seldom reveal anything important about my inner being. It's a habit which is so thoroughly ingrained that I spent some three hours considering whether I would, in fact post anything at all about the party, just because a major part of my experience was feeling attracted to someone. In the end my analysis showed that the probability that there would be any negative consequences to this revelation (other than intense embarassement on my part if this becomes a topic of conversation tomorrow when the party resumes) to be very small.

And when I analyze my analysis I notice something telling. I think that the reason I am so down on myself for my closed-in behaviour is because it all eventually boils down to a matter of trust. Simply put, I don't easily trust people, and I dislike that in myself. So, my worries that I spent 3 hours enumerating to myself had nothing to do with MY behaviour. THAT isn't likely to change, and I know myself too well to worry that it might. No, the problem was how other people's behaviours might change. I don't feel I can trust people with information about myself, because it may cause them to leap to conclusions prematurely, or worse yet, my give them ammunition to use against me, so I keep it all hidden inside me.

This has, naturally, caused me major problems in the past. I spent the first 25-or-so years of my life with a crushing burden of shyness. It was never that I had a self-image problem, or that I thought I was unattractive or unworthy of love or any of a dozen other reasons I read about in (useless) self-help books. It was that I always viewed each new person as a potential attacker, someone I dared not turn my back on. I felt that anyone I didn't already know was all too apt to prejudge me or judge me harshly on circumstantial evidence and that no one would bother to get to know me before deciding if they liked me. To this day if I hear unattributed laughter my first assumption is always that its at my expense. (This is also an explanation of why I don't mind speaking in public or acting in plays. When I'm in front of an audience I'm in a position of authority and/or power, and I feel far less vulnerable. Any attacks are percieved to be attacks upon my position and not upon myself per se.)

My shyness got so bad that in High School I had 6 or 7 distinct personalities that I would switch between depending on who I was with. None of the personalities were the real me, they were just all different fronts designed to cause different groups to jump to the desired conclusions about me. Eventually, the effort of maintaining the facades, and the effort of ensuring that the groups never mingled became too much to maintain. I started merging the different 'Me's that I projected and was relieved when it didn't result in disaster.

When I went on to Cegep I started trying to project a 'unified front' so to speak. As time has passed, I have gradually overcome much of my shyness. Every time I trust someone a tiny bit, and that trust isn't betrayed, my shyness diminishes a bit more. Every time it IS betrayed (and it has happened) then my shyness is strongly reinforced. My SO, taxlady has helped me immensely in this. There is no one else that I have ever trusted with a tenth of the things she knows about me, and no one who has ever proven more worthy of that trust. I can't count the number of times I have, after great consideration, revealed some terrible inner secret to her, sure that THIS TIME I was going to regret it, only to have her end up loving me all the more.

This has, in turn, helped encourage me to open myself up to others a bit more, and is one of the primary (in my mind) purposes of me having an LJ account in the first place. It lets me practice that openness in a far less intimidating setting that face-to-face with someone.

Ah well. Enough of the mental struggles tonight. Its already waaaay past any sort of reasonable time to go to sleep now, but I stayed and forced myself to write down all of the above, because it felt like I was actually exploring something useful about myself. And now, I'm going to post it, sans spell-checking or rereading for gramattical errors, to prevent me chickening out at the last moment.


Night (morning?) all!

Comments

[sps.livejournal.com]

Mm, meanwhile I've constructed a persona out of modules, and then welded them together rigidly. This has the effect that I tend to be ok up to a point and then abruptly start to doubt myself globally, as you may have noticed.

But, goodness, I don't see that you should feel shy about liking the lady. I'm all but certain she had that effect on more than half of us. Yummy!

[swestrup]

Well, of course. As I said in the post, the shyness comes from not trusting strangers and has little, if anything, to do with the feeling of attraction.

[thebabynancy.livejournal.com]

Sans spell checking... that's living dangerously, non?

*teehees*

I know when I like to let loose, and take a walk on the wild side... that's my first choice.

*inserts her adequate sense of humour here*

And thank you very much for the kind words. :)

*blushes profusely*

I think you are swell, too.


:) Nancy