ramblings
I have always been afraid of being transparent to anyone: guess it stems from the fact tht I could never keep anything from my dad...... he would always know wats on my mind, what wrongs i have done, what wrongs i am about to do, which exam i am gonna flunk, there was nothing which i could keep from him.....not even if i was trying to watch "A" movies on cable at night, he would know tht too..... and having to confront the question of whether i was watching it last night was an ordeal at breakfast, it would make me squirm in my seat and that ordeal changed me in many ways...... since I knew very well how you can feel if somone puts you on the hot seat, i kind of made it into a quest that i will not let other people feel the same way, and thus from then on i was on a quest to make people at home with me - which means that i became the most diplomatic person you could ever be.......... it was nice at the beginning there was absolutely nobody who did not like me, i was not exactly the most popular girl but i was one of the most liked ones. tho there were instances when people did not like me becoz i was too goody goody for them, but generally i was perfectly happy with whatever public opinion there was out there about me..........
but it was only after i came to Binghy that things started changing...... i applied the same theories here and it worked in the beginning, i became everyone's good friend, I could basically walk into every Indian apt, in my apt complex and feel accepted. But then it strted to get really ugly. Back in India no matter what you always have your family to fall back on, here you have only your friends to fall back on and thus you rely on them like family, so I soon began to be inundated by what you might say were "too many" close friends and it was hard to keep on juggling between all of them. It was not like back home where I could juggle between all the people I knew without anyone trying to put a sovereign seal of friendship on me which could not be transgressed. Here it became something like warring factions, if you are friendly with one you cannot be friendly with the other, that sort of thing, it became stifling. then there were times when i felt claustrophobic because too many people had too many expectations from me. To run from them and for a change i cultivated some outside acquaintances - it was much more relaxed there - i could come and go as I please, but after awhile I was questioned there also about my so called allegiances to these groups, it stuck to mere leg pulling in the beginning but afterwards questions came up like - do you have to be a people pleaser? do you have to mold yourself to everyone else's choice, taste, then how do you know the actual you? i cudnt understand the questions int he beginning - I was into this orgy of attention seeking or was it security blanket search and anything that seemed to accept me was comfortable. I could spend hours in inane talk about boys and gossip and feel comfortable. And yet I felt even more comfortable discussing about the more practical aspects of life, or the more interesting ones - those which were still virgin territories for most people or those which even if they had experienced they did not have the words to describe. I used to think I was the more homely kinds, the ones who would be happy with the same grind throughout their whole life, but I discovered here I am not , I love new experiences, and if i am too afraid to venture into them myself I love to know how other people went through them. I had one friend who was excellent at this and yet there was the sam complaint from him - he was afraid of me coz I was so diplomatic and would always maintain a certain distance and yet it was exactly becasue he could tell this to my face that he could be around me.Interesting right? well so what was i going thru? a transiton between knowing what i really am - and just finding comfortable places to fit in which were easy to deal with?
I left that place and moved to an apt which was more isolated, and perhaps the move has helped me figure things out. It would be very wrong of me though if I do not mention my two friends who helped me perhaps to at least become aware of other ways of being. One of them spent hours at times trying to tell me what was different in other people which set them apart, which made them attractive as people but I could not get it then. Now I know what they meant at least in part I guess. That time I spent getting to know them was perhaps the best I have ever had - it was not easy, i used to fall short in trying to match upto them, i used to be exetremely gullible at times I still am ..... They themselves said thatthe two as a combination were deadly for me, they truly were....... The worst was when I grew insecure about their combo i guess, somewhere i started veerieng away from the one i was closer to actually and stuck to the other one........silly isnt it?........ i had this constant insecurity of being judged......... an old throwback to the days when my dad used to judge my character from my every move. I used to hate that and yet funnily enough i fell for a guy i thot was judging me , I was apprehensive about him and yet i fell for him.......... very strange.......... but at least after everything has happenned I now know what kind of company i really like, thts been the best that has happened after this whole affair, I had set out to write about something totally different and ended up writing something quite different but anyway as long as it is out of my system its good!
but it was only after i came to Binghy that things started changing...... i applied the same theories here and it worked in the beginning, i became everyone's good friend, I could basically walk into every Indian apt, in my apt complex and feel accepted. But then it strted to get really ugly. Back in India no matter what you always have your family to fall back on, here you have only your friends to fall back on and thus you rely on them like family, so I soon began to be inundated by what you might say were "too many" close friends and it was hard to keep on juggling between all of them. It was not like back home where I could juggle between all the people I knew without anyone trying to put a sovereign seal of friendship on me which could not be transgressed. Here it became something like warring factions, if you are friendly with one you cannot be friendly with the other, that sort of thing, it became stifling. then there were times when i felt claustrophobic because too many people had too many expectations from me. To run from them and for a change i cultivated some outside acquaintances - it was much more relaxed there - i could come and go as I please, but after awhile I was questioned there also about my so called allegiances to these groups, it stuck to mere leg pulling in the beginning but afterwards questions came up like - do you have to be a people pleaser? do you have to mold yourself to everyone else's choice, taste, then how do you know the actual you? i cudnt understand the questions int he beginning - I was into this orgy of attention seeking or was it security blanket search and anything that seemed to accept me was comfortable. I could spend hours in inane talk about boys and gossip and feel comfortable. And yet I felt even more comfortable discussing about the more practical aspects of life, or the more interesting ones - those which were still virgin territories for most people or those which even if they had experienced they did not have the words to describe. I used to think I was the more homely kinds, the ones who would be happy with the same grind throughout their whole life, but I discovered here I am not , I love new experiences, and if i am too afraid to venture into them myself I love to know how other people went through them. I had one friend who was excellent at this and yet there was the sam complaint from him - he was afraid of me coz I was so diplomatic and would always maintain a certain distance and yet it was exactly becasue he could tell this to my face that he could be around me.Interesting right? well so what was i going thru? a transiton between knowing what i really am - and just finding comfortable places to fit in which were easy to deal with?
I left that place and moved to an apt which was more isolated, and perhaps the move has helped me figure things out. It would be very wrong of me though if I do not mention my two friends who helped me perhaps to at least become aware of other ways of being. One of them spent hours at times trying to tell me what was different in other people which set them apart, which made them attractive as people but I could not get it then. Now I know what they meant at least in part I guess. That time I spent getting to know them was perhaps the best I have ever had - it was not easy, i used to fall short in trying to match upto them, i used to be exetremely gullible at times I still am ..... They themselves said thatthe two as a combination were deadly for me, they truly were....... The worst was when I grew insecure about their combo i guess, somewhere i started veerieng away from the one i was closer to actually and stuck to the other one........silly isnt it?........ i had this constant insecurity of being judged......... an old throwback to the days when my dad used to judge my character from my every move. I used to hate that and yet funnily enough i fell for a guy i thot was judging me , I was apprehensive about him and yet i fell for him.......... very strange.......... but at least after everything has happenned I now know what kind of company i really like, thts been the best that has happened after this whole affair, I had set out to write about something totally different and ended up writing something quite different but anyway as long as it is out of my system its good!
posted by beas hyphasis at 3:16 PM
2 Comments:
Your ramblings sound so much like my own. The constant drifting, accusations of being a people-pleaser, not being comfortable with friends and not having may true friends... At least you now know what kind of company you like. I'm still trying to figure out if there's something wrong with me.
well you know what.......... knowing me i dont know if i will change again.......... but for the moment i have done a lot of soul searching driven myself crazy with the questionings and arrived at this point........hopefully it will stick.......... i dont wanna lose out on an opportunity again this time coz i could not decide or i was too immature.........hopefully things will fall on the right track from now on, oh and by the way thanks for adding my blog as a link, its boosted my confidence quite a bit:)
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