Random Musings

You know when you’re expecting cake, and hoping for cake, but then you get broccoli? And not good broccoli, but rather dried out, old broccoli? Know that feeling?

That’s kind of what you get when you’re around me. Dried out broccoli.

I’ve never been good at the social thing. I’m abysmal at small talk, laugh at the wrong times, have issues with eye contact (it used to be I never looked away, but that’s culturally weird here, so now I look away all the time), and often say awkward or random things. I’ve been told I’m too intense and I try too hard.

I try far less these days. I am intense, and I prefer to talk about big things. I’m uninterested in clothing, make up, fitness, and what other groups of people think when those groups only serve to irritate me like a splinter to the brain (I.e America right now).

We were sitting in the sun today talking about some serious stuff, and my reactions to that stuff. I asked Nic, who recognises my non-typical responses, if my way of being ever bothers her. She said it doesn’t, that she likes my otherness. And we talked about my push-pull desire to be liked and invited and included, while simultaneously hoping I can continue to exist in my bubble without having to put any effort into the world’s inhabitants. You can see how this works as well as making ice in the oven.

The nice thing, I think, is finding the people who get you, who find dried out broccoli interesting for its own sake, who not only don’t mind your flaky vegetableness, but engage with it because they, too, sometimes feel like a version of a dried up food product. Imposter syndrome vegetables, unite!

This is all to say, I don’t reach out. I don’t communicate much, I don’t always have much to say. I like silence and isolation and working from home. But if you ever need to chat (online—I hate the phone), I’m at the other end of an @ sign.