I don’t know what’s more annoying – being a kid who thinks like a grown up or being a grown up who thinks like a kid. And I’ve been both!

As a child I stopped making friends coz I realised that kids hurt. All my little friends were more interested in what they could get from me than in what was really me. This may be a fact of life, but you don’t need to recognise it at age six.

By standard 3 I had convinced myself that any pals I made would dump me for someone taller, funnier or prettier, so I just stopped trying. And by age 12 I had taken it a step further. When I felt I was getting too close or too attached to anyone, I found some reason to ‘break up’ with them.

Now I am all of 27 years and while my friends are doing sensible things like reading Obama biographies, I am bopping my head to bubblegum pop and reading manga. I don’t get jazz, I balk at Afro Fusion, and I have no idea who Oprah is. I mean I know who she is but I don’t know who she is.

And the unthinkable has happened. I have acquired the dreaded 28s!! That fear that I thought I would never get – the fear of my sell-by date! I’ve always seen girls approach thirty with dread, and I just didn’t get it. I mean what’s the big deal, right? Why would it bother anyone?

Well guess what, it’s bothering me. Bigtime. I feel like my spring days are behind me and there’s so much more I should have done. Bye bye go the pencil jeans [argh cellulite!!] and endless streams of boys and smooth elastic skin, and yet I’ve barely had time to enjoy them!! Ridiculous thoughts given all I have achieved, but I can’t help thinking this is the year I stop announcing my age…

Anyway.

I was wondering what I ever did with myself before twitter. I mean I stopped being a mingler ages ago – yes, I was fairly outgoing before I decided that people suck, I can admit that now 🙂 Maybe that’s what people see when they think I’m an extrovert; my babyhood leftovers.

I do feel this need to reach out to people, to get them to open up their narrow minds and see beyond their noses. It’s just that I prefer to do it from afar. A magic wand would so rock my world. Wings would help too, and some kind of invisibility cloak.

Actually, now that I think about it, I’m not really an introvert at all – or at least I wasn’t born that way. I was pretty all-over-the-place as a kid. Everybody knew me, and I knew everybody. I used to like being with people, making friends, being popular, hanging out.

But somewhere along the way, for some reason I don’t quite understand, I just made myself that way. I fell into myself and stopped trusting people. I learnt to be uncomfortable around them, and made myself resent them. I got obssessive about my space and turned hermit. Now I just want to be far away from everyone, except maybe online, or with the few special ones that win my trust. That means you and you and you and you and you 🙂

Actually, now that I think about it, I realise what the trigger was. Sigh. Took me long enough. I wonder if I can change. Do I even want to?

Well it explains one thing. The rule states that opposites attract, yet I am more attracted to introverts that are ‘just like me’. Maybe that’s because I’m not an introvert at all. Interesting.

But I digress. What did I do before twitter? Well, I wrote mail. Real mail, with stamps and post boxes and everything. I started gathering penpals pretty early, and kept them for quite a while. Even racked the Sunday Nation and picked them from there. **blush** Then I wrote high school mail to former classmates and relatives. Long, detailed mails. I’m told they were quite entertaining, I guess the writer in me was alive even then.

When that passed I moved on to text, as many as 15 a day. I was always asked how I could fit so much info into just 160 characters. **grin** Of course none of my people ever actually replied my texts. Or even read them really. Hehehe. The main reason why all my phones must have a delivery-suceeded feature: peace of mind.

Then came email circa 2000 and the fun began. There are people to whom I would [and still do] write every single day. How they put up with me I will never know. Spam perhaps?

Then came chat, and then twitter. Same old me, making friends from afar, sifting a few to let into me, keeping the rest at a distance, pulling away when I get too involved, when I feel like I love them more than I should, or that I need them more than they need me. Yeah, I still do that **sheepish grin**

It’s kinda weird too, that the real reason I keep to myself isn’t that I dislike people. Granted I get tired of socials, and I feel like I need to pull away and recover. There are countable people in my life with whom I’ve been able to sit and talk endlessly. Very few. One is you, and you really have no idea. You too, and you.

But in all honesty, the real reason I stay away from people is fear. I’m afraid of running out of ideas, not knowing what to say or how to act, looking like an idiot. Those awkward silences terrify me. Which is why I was so into that one. The silences were many, and never awkward. Somehow I never felt the need to fill them, and that was really beautiful. I’ve only had that with one other person, and I doubt she even noticed it. How I love that girl.

Fear is the same reason I don’t dance. When I’m by myself, I forechoreograph a few moves, then my mind goes blank. I imagine being on a dancefloor full of people and simply running out of dance steps. The horror!! So I only dance inside my head.

It also explains why I doubt INFJs. I feel very much like it, the description is accurate, but my introvert score is unearthly. I’ve heard of other INFJs and I always thought they must have faked the test, because they are so unlike me! But now I realise it’s me who isn’t like them, coz I’ve hidden who I am so deep inside that I can barely recognise it myself. Creepy.

I’m done ranting now. As you were 🙂

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