my DOG is more social than I am.
My sister, her boyfriend, and her-friend-that-is-a-boy are playing pool downstairs on our old rickety table. There are six empty beer boxes beneath each hole because the netting has been chewed through, and each time someone gets a point, is an idiot, conquers or loses miserably, there is this THUNK! as faux-ivory ball hits tile.
My dad is down there, playing with them. My mum is just outside, near the screen door, offering loudly any remarks and staying involved as she relaxes back with a beer, her face to our garden, which is very green but also grey due to the cloud cover. My dog tip toes around it all, weaving amongst legs of people and chairs, staying part of the party.
And then, walk upstairs, thunk-creak-thunk-wooden-groan, up into the quiet upper-storey of the house where the incoherent twittering of our lorikeet pair bubbles through the verandah door. Follow the sound of distant music, and turning a corner, past the kitchen where all is still, you will find me. Me. Me, sitting at my desk, quietly, staring into space. Perhaps with a milk-moustache - I haven't looked in the mirror yet. {There is nothing like a glass of cold milk when you feel like it}. But yes. I am here, listening to music that ranges from classical to bizzarre. Soon, I will be hammering, making my own brand of noise - but that. is not. the point.
Am I a recluse? Am I dooming myself by participating in such antisocial behaviour? I can hear the psychotherapists now.
Argh.
When I'm not being a smarty pants, when I'm not being sarcastic or getting worked up; when I'm not feeling a little anxious, when I'm not being loud, when I'm not running fast or dancing with energy - I often feel like I'm the black sheep in this family.
I don't want to be a recluse like my grandfather, merely because I do what I want to do.
And who knows? If I got involved down there, I might really have an awesome time.
But, I don't know. It just - it's like, like what Missy Higgins sings, I'm a triangle trying to squeeze through a circle.
I just don't fit.
(wow. That was really a jump to acknowledge. But, I don't know if I can say it was a lie. Is that bad?)
why I'm here
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- indi
- I am trying to understand the entirety of my existence, and while I don't want to be preoccupied with figuring it all out, I suppose I am all the same.
1 comment:
It's about choices. Doing what's important to you. If that's to be off somewhere, creating something, or thinking, then that's what you should be doing.
You don't have to be social. If you want to be social - if you feel it's more important to be in peoples' presence, because it will make a difference for them, than to be doing your own thing, then do it. Don't beat yourself up over it. Some things feel right, some don't. Compromising what you believe, is one of the worst things you can be faced with in life. Whether it's the decision not to drink, to go out to places you don't like going, with people you don't trust not to push you to compromise yourself further - this is a bigger, and more important part of your journey to "you", than fashion choices, books to read, courses to study. It is your actions that define who you are - they have to reflect what you believe.
Not that you can't, and won't, try on different ways of being. You can push your own boundaries as far as you care / dare. Just let them be your choices.
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