I Try to Stay Awake and Remember My Name
I have so much to talk about, concerning the Tool concert, my last few days of partying, the house and whatnot. But for now, I feel like a little self-analyzation.
I am so weird. And I don't mean that in a "look at me, I am so weird, I must be alternatively cool and trendy" type of way.
No, I am just a flat out weirdo. A socially-inept oddity. I sometimes feel so awkward in human skin with human companions, that I just totally crumble. I always tell myself I am social. I tell myself this, because I often enjoy the company of groups and seem to make friends wherever I go. I always feel totally surrounded by people who are interested in me and I them.
But then I started thinking about it and realized, all my friends came from SCHOOL. All my friends I know from high school or college. I know so many people because I was forced into the same buildings as them non-stop for a dozen or so years. Were I thrown into a room with them all suddenly, having never gone to school with them before, I bet I would be the last person people talked to! Even my best friends!
No it's not a self esteem issue. It's the simple fact that I notice my behavior greatly, especially when I am out wandering alone like today. I am a clod. I am a bumbling, nervous, clutzy, shy, jittery mess. I am something akin to a clown if you watch me from a distance. I may have a lot of friends, but the truth is that I am so shy and strange that I can't even talk to people I don't know. This is why I so often fail to make many new friends when I go places. I am so shy that when someone stops me or if I have to communicate with someone at a restaurant or library, my voice comes out in a stuttering squeak. People always ask me to repeat myself and then stare with a slightly, worried and suspicious eye.
If I am walking down the street and someone is walking towards me, I just fall apart. My body goes real stiff, I start dropping shit, I have been known to trip. I just panic at any chance of communication. It's not that I don't want to communicate. It's just that I am strange. And sometimes when I do communicate, people just don't get me. Even my close friends go on and on about how odd I can be. They call me a weirdo, but not in an insulting way. It's just true that I can be odd and I have these really bizarre thoughts and quirks that can baffle. I think about the dumbest things, I worry about the most unrealistic circumstances, I day dream so much that half the time I am standing in front of someone, but I am a million miles somewhere else, flying through space on a tremendous white rocket, heading for the moon of some unknown planet.
I am always so deep within the unlimited confines of an overactive mind, that I forget that I am on a planet full of other conscious creatures. And when I suddenly wake up for a moment and realize I am not alone and in fact, I am about to make some sort of interaction with another life form, my mind overheats, destructs, and leaves me in a vacant, confused lurch.
Just a few minutes ago here at the library, I was putting some books in the drop slot. A man was standing there, waiting for me to put them in. A perfect example of my social anxiety, I start shaking and I go to take the books out, and instead I drop my wallet, my credit cards, and some change all over the ground. I scramble to pick them up and then drop my bag. I finally have the books in my hand and the guy is looking at me with the most stressed look and he's repeating over and over again "I can take those books for you." and I am just staring at him as if he were alligator with a sombrero on, speaking to me in Latin. It didn't even occur to me that he was speaking to ME, trying to get through to me, despite my weird clumsiness. My hand is shaking as I hand him the books and I am trying to say "Thank you" but the word "Thank" comes out in a whisper and the word "You" came out in an overdramatic, piercing squeak. He's looking at me, slightly bothered even as I am walking away.
Then after this incident, I started walking up some stairs to this computer center. As usual, I am fumbling with my bag, kind of swaying from side on the stairs because I am multi-tasking with my bag, trying to navigate myself without looking like too much of an idiot. When suddenly I noticed a girl about 2 stairs behind me trying her hardest to guess where I am going next so she can try and go around me. I freak out because someone is there watching me, I try to hurry along, totally miss a stair so I have to hop up 2 steps without falling down, and then I crash into the railing and fall down a step anyway, nearly knocking a toddler down the stairs.
It's like no matter what I do, when I am not in the company of those I already know, I am a fool. A vacant, day-dreamy, clueless fool. The problem is definitely exacerbated when I am alone and concentrating on myself, rather than the company of others. I tend to laugh out loud when no one is around, or suddenly burst out into song, or start muttering to myself. I always feel transparent, yet at the same time I am a sore thumb sticking out in the crowd and everyone notices me in some way, but no one understands it or accepts it. The only time I do not feel like this is when I am drunk or high, because then everyone is a bit more strange and bold and accepting.
It's been 22 years, and I still am not used to myself. I think so much, so often, about so many different levels and elements of myself and life and everything in existence, that I almost forgot that I am in fact, existing right now. And when I suddenly remember that I am here, right now, in real life, and a man is asking to take some books from me and he's looking upset, because he doesn't know why I am looking right through him, it all becomes perfectly clear that maybe I am not cut out for this whole human thing.
If I wan't a human, and was instead a shirt, maybe I could have someone iron out all the wrinkles and imperfections. But I'm not a shirt.
For now I feel like a discounted pair of socks at a clothing store, with the sticker "slightly irregular" slapped on the label.
I think the subject for this post explains it all, really.
The vacant oddity, the one-of-a-kind, the totally disasterous, but always surprising life and mind of Jamie Lynn Strange.