Confession #55

Being short is aggravating.

This post comes about as a result of a very brief but panic-inducing encounter which lasted long enough to scare me but not long enough to cause public humiliation. What happened and how did my height (or lack thereof) cause it, you ask?

I got trapped in a building with automatic sliding doors. Again.

This incident may have only lasted two seconds or so before someone walked up behind me, but still. Two seconds is plenty of time for panic to set in.

(In case you're wondering, the last time it happened, I was about seven or eight years old and got stuck in a grocery store. My mom had sent me, by myself, to take a basket back inside. The doors were already open when I approached the store, but they were closed by the time I had returned the basket and wanted to leave. The sensors above the doors couldn't see me, and the doors wouldn't open. It. Was. Terrifying. I was trapped there for two or three minutes (which felt like an eternity) until another person walked up and was tall enough to properly exit the building.)

Yeah, it's a laughable situation now, but it's still frustrating. I don't think normal-sized people really understand what it's like to be short.

It's really annoying to go places with my little sister, who is eight years my junior, and have people speak to us as if we are the same age. This happens all the time, and it wouldn't be such a big deal except for the fact that she is currently a smaller than average twelve-year-old. Every now and then I get the urge to say something like, “Listen, pal, I understand that you're trying to be friendly, but stop patronizing me. I have a vocabulary full of things that my parents have to look up, so just use your grown-up words, okay?” (But then I remember that I'm afraid of people, so I just smile and nod and let my sister do the talking.)

A couple years ago, my family went to a casual sit-down restaurant where adults were given beverages in non-disposable, straw-free cups. I got a styrofoam cup with a lid. When my sister started middle school, I happened to be with her at back-to-school night (don't remember why...) and was mistaken for an incoming sixth grader. I was nineteen. The day I moved into my dorm room last summer, my family and I went to out for lunch and I was offered a kids' menu. Two months ago, a volunteer Santa gave me a goody bag and told me to be sure and mind my mom and to keep my room clean. Gah!

People often tell me that being short is not a bad thing. Said people have obviously never been in a position where they couldn't even see out of the peephole in their door, or couldn't reach something in their closet without using a stool, or couldn't properly sit in a deep-backed chair because their legs were so short that sitting all the way back would require them to have their knees straightened and in the seat with them, with the result being that they sit forward in the seat to allow their legs to bend but then have to lean way back to reach the back of the chair, while their feet still don't touch the floor because their legs are just that short. Not a bad thing. Hrmph. Oh the stories I could tell! I haven't even mentioned all the problems I faced as a kid!

Sigh.

Okay. I'll stop ranting now. I'm fine, I swear. Just needed to vent. Haha.

Confession #54

I always have my best ideas in the middle of the night. 

I think it must have something to do with my being completely exhausted and thus thinking in an altered state of mind. Most of my ideas for novels have come to me after midnight, and after I have a main premise in mind, most of my plot twists and character quirks are hatched at a similar hour. This is also when I come up with brilliant plans for just about everything else. The problem is that I eventually fall asleep and forget all about these wonderful schemes.

Just last night—more accurately, around one or two o'clock this morning—I had a fantastic idea for a pattern for a crocheted hat. And right up until ten minutes ago, I had no memory of it whatsoever. Many times I will go through the process of forgetting, remembering, forgetting, then realizing I forgot something but not being able to remember what. Hopefully that won't happen this time, but if it does, this post should help jog my memory. In fact, that's mainly why I'm typing this. (And also because I'm avoiding finishing the paper I'm supposed to be writing for Brit Lit.)

(Hey, did you notice that I threw in some extra adjectives? I did that just for you. You know who you are.)

Confession #53

I don't perform well when I have a large number of things demanded of me or am put under great pressure.

In fact, I perform quite poorly. Rather than being motivated to do the things that need to be done, my Fight/Flight instinct kicks in and flight wins out. Except instead of running away from my problems, my brain just sort of shuts down. It's more faint than flight, really. Like a myotonic goat.

Reflection

Alright, here's the thing. When I made my resolution one year and twelve days ago, I had already determined that I would be starting school in August. In fact, that was one of my larger motivations in starting this blog. However, I had no clue what effects school would have on me mentally or physically. Things got really hairy for me around the middle of the semester, and by the end of it I was doing everything I could just to stay coherent. That included cutting out every bit of stress possible, and unfortunately, that meant breaking my resolution. Keeping up my weekly confessions just took too much time and effort.

Even though it didn't go quite as I had hoped, I do think that this blog has helped me. I never had very many readers, but I know of at least one good friend that read everything I posted, so in the later months, I envisioned myself writing each confession specifically aimed at her. Doing that made everything feel a little more real and a little less like I was just rambling on the internet. It added a bit more vulnerability to the experience I guess you could say. It didn't matter that a lot of my confessions were silly or inconsequential things; they were still my private thoughts laid bare. Opening up was the whole point of this exercise—first in text, and then application in the real world.

The real world has been a much more troublesome adventure. I spent the first seven and a half months of the year just like I spent the five years prior, which was on my own more often than not, and not by choice. That made the whole “growth as a person” thing kinda hard, but the odd day of work provided me with the opportunity to talk to co-workers. It may be a little ridiculous, but even having known them for three years, I found it difficult to make smalltalk with them. I did my best to change that over the summer.

And then August came. School. Wow. I met more people in the first two weeks of school than I had met in years.

It. Was. Terrifying.

But I survived! And I spoke to people! Moreover, I made some new friends!

I even started talking a bit in my smaller classes. I raised my hand to be called on and everything! Not often, mind you, but the fact that I did it at all speaks to how far I've come since I started this self-betterment journey.

I suppose I should note that when I say I started talking in class, I mean I answered professors' questions and participated in class discussions. I did not do much talking at all with classmates. One-on-one stuff still really freaks me out. But I am still working on it. Just because the year ended and I did not keep my resolution entirely doesn't mean I'm done trying. I have plenty of room for improvement yet. Plenty.

For instance, in my last class today—Critical Analysis and Writing, which is just a fancy title for a generic freshman English class—my professor brought up the idea that characters in books can sometimes feel more real than the people we actually interact with from day to day. This sparked some discussion, and I decided to share my opinions on the matter. As I sat and waited for a classmate to finish speaking, however, my resolve fizzled out into a minor panic attack. Needless to say, I kept my thoughts to myself.

I was forced to speak later though. You know, the typical “Give your name and something interesting about yourself” introduction that you get at the beginning of the semester. The only semi-interesting thing I could think of was the fact that I'm allergic to everything. My professor then wanted details, like how many doctors I had seen, any precautions, etc. I ended up giving a very (very!) brief summary of my medical history that seemed to last forever. (Brief as it was, it still took a few minutes to get out.) I was shaking and struggling to speak in an even tone by the end of it. I don't like being the center of attention. Not. One. Bit.

So there you have it.

I didn't manage to keep up with this blog for an entire year, and I'm still incredibly shy, but I am better for having done this.

I'll probably continue to post confessions from time to time, or more likely, just musings whenever the mood strikes me. I find that all this word vomit is quite useful for sorting my thoughts.

Confession #52

I love giving gifts.

Maybe a little too much. This time of year, any time I have a little extra money, I'm always tempted to spend all of it on Christmas presents. I don't even need to have extra money! Even when I really need to save what little I have, I want to buy things for people. Half the time I have to stop myself from buying presents for people I have already shopped for. And the urge to buy things doesn't stop when Christmas rolls around. I usually stay in the shopping mindset through January. I'll be out and see something cool and think, "I should get that for <insert friend/family member here>, (s)he would love it!" Then I have to remind myself that Christmas was three weeks ago and I only have seven dollars to my name.

The only thing I like more than giving gifts is wrapping them. In fact, I have actually gone out and bought things just because I ran out of stuff to wrap. When I wrap gifts that my parents got for my siblings, it isn't because I want to be helpful; it's because I can't stand knowing there are naked presents in the house when I have wrapping paper, tape, ribbon, and bows. It's actually a little ridiculous how excited I get when faced with a bare box.

(In case you were wondering, yes, I have started Christmas shopping this year. I started two weeks ago.)

Confession #51

I really want to learn to speak Welsh. 

(Reading/writing implied.)

I can hear my grandmother now. "Why on Earth are you wasting your time with that?! You're never going to use it!" She didn't even approve of my taking French in high school, arguing that if I wanted to be useful in today's society, I would take Spanish.

Well too bad, Grandma. This is going on my bucket list.

Confession #50

I'm a neurotic test taker.

I double-check the answer on the test page before filling in a bubble on the answer sheet. And then I triple-check it. And then I check it again as I fill in the bubble. And sometimes once more when I'm done. And if I don't fill in the bubble just so, I have to erase it and start over again. Then I repeat the process with the next question. Needless to say, I'm never the first person to complete a test and hand it in.