figure myself out

I’m a bit sad because of how my relationship (or ‘relationship’, what is it if two people work together and used to joke around a lot at work too?) with A has changed after that little ‘incident’ about a week ago. He definitely keeps avoiding me, doesn’t talk to me as much as he used to, and somehow I get this tiny hostility vibe coming from him. I’m not scared of him by any means, it might be more to show others (colleagues that is) that he isn’t trying to get too familiar with me… And perhaps he is a bit ashamed of the way he acted on the phone the other time. I just can’t help but wonder if the problem is me after all. If I really am just too annoying and he can’t stand it, and that’s why he’s avoiding my presence. I mean why on earth else did everything change so quickly? I don’t think he hates me (really, I don’t, he has no reason to do that) but there certainly is something and I’d die to know what it is, because this situation is driving me crazy.

You might wonder why I care so much, he’s just a colleague after all (no, I do not have a crush on him), but I just want him to like me. Joke around with me, be relaxed even when I’m around, I don’t want people to have to be on their toes just because I’m around. Then I wonder that could it be – god, this is going to sound so arrogant, forgive me – that he has (or at least had and now he’s ashamed of it) a crush on me and thus avoids me…? I know how stupid that sounds, considering our age difference and the fact that we work together (I know these things happen, surely, but still, I don’t know, sounds a bit too unrealistic in this case?), but I’m running out of possible explanations here. Why is he avoiding me? I can’t just go and ask him, he wouldn’t say anything anyway. Is it just me, is there something about me that makes people (especially men for some reason) run away from me after a while?

This doesn’t belong under this goal, but since there isn’t any other goal on my list under which this could go, I figured this was enough. I have to write somewhere because I haven’t felt this agitated and a bit scared too in a very, very long time. I even feel a little violated, but that’s probably just my imagination.

The thing is, the weirdest incident happened at work today. I’ve mentioned my colleague A a couple of times in my other entries, yes? It was his day off today, and a bit after 6 pm he called to our department asking when he’d have to come to work tomorrow. J answered the phone, and I was standing next to her when she told A what shift he had, and just because I like A, I always joke around at work with him, I said in a bit louder voice “Hi A!”, so that he could hear me. Well, then for some reason he wanted to talk to me (it’s surprising, because he doesn’t usually talk that much) and then I spent the next 15 minutes or so talking to him about random stuff. I know it was wrong of me to prolong the conversation like that, since I was at work after all, but it was rather quiet, so I thought I could chat with him a while.

I had a hard time getting off the phone, because he just kept on going and going, at the end it was getting a bit irritating already. I could hear it in his voice and how he was so chatty that he had been drinking “a bit”, but I didn’t really think much of it. Just told him a couple of times to take it easy, since he had a workday tomorrow. Well, I finally got off the phone, and then maybe after 15 minutes or so, he calls again. This time I pick up the phone, he doesn’t say who he is, and asks for the electronics department. I naturally assume he’s a customer, so tell him that he has the wrong number and that I can give him the right one. He asks: “can’t you just connect me with the department?” Since he called to our cellphone, I can’t do that, and I told him that. The next thing he said really shook me up: “WELL CAN’T YOU JUST FUCKING DO THAT?!” I mean it was unbelievable, I was shocked. (for the record, we sometimes get customers like that, but they’re luckily scarce) Then he asked for me, Laura, and when I said I was on the phone, he started laughing and that’s when I realised who it was. Our conversation went on for a little longer, until he said good night and hung up the phone.

The first call was still okay, even funny, but the second one just got me confused and pretty disturbed. I mean, I’m worried about him. He had been drinking, and I’d say it’s rather irresponsible to call to your workplace like that. I was told he’s had problems like these before too. I’m shocked, to tell you the truth, I didn’t know A had this kind of side as well. I’m going to talk about this to my teamleader tomorrow – I don’t want any drama, but if he needs help, he should definitely get it before it’s too late, and I don’t want him to lose his job for instance. It’s just… I’m disturbed, I don’t know what’s going on. And I’m not sure if I want to see him tomorrow, he should be ashamed of himself, at least a little bit.

This incident just left me with very mixed up feelings, I’m not sure if I can fall asleep without the help of some painkillers. (400mg pills work wonderfully as sleeping pills, when I take two of those I can be sure I’ll sleep without dreams – I know they’re not meant for that, but I don’t really care. I only use them when I truly feel I’m too upset to fall asleep)

... aka my intensity. I really feel it’s more of a bother than anything else, and I wish I was better at recognising when too much is just too much. I don’t know, is there some kind of a defect in me because I don’t seem to understand such a simple thing? I wouldn’t mind if I could just forget this by thinking everybody draws the line on a different point – that it’s an individual thing – but I can’t. I can’t, and instead I feel stupid for not being able to see when I’ve crossed the line and I should just shut up and calm down. (and for those who don’t know me too well: above anything else I fear and hate to be seen as I’m stupid)

I just think this makes me less of a human being, lowers my worth and I hate that feeling, because I know I deserve to be appreciated and I’m likeable. I’m confused.

Every now and then, usually when I least expect it, I get this unconquerable urge to question everything I ever thought was true and fight against every value I’ve hold dear. In other words, I get stuck in a turmoil and I want to turn my life upside down, because the current lifestyle doesn’t seem to offer me what I ‘need’. The thing is, I always return to the state I was in before the upheaval, and it always feels like the right place for me to be. I feel like that right now. I acted recklessly during the summer, turned everything upside down, lived like I didn’t care about tomorrow. Now I’ve calmed down, all the anarchy I wanted to cause in my life (this has nothing to do with others, it’s all about causing a disturb in my life) has disappeared and all I want now is calmness and serenity. And it really seems this is who I am in reality, there’s no use fighting it. I’m not that social butterfly that flutters from a party to another, has gazillion acquaintances and is always on the go. I do enjoy socialising and spending time with people more than before, but there are times I just want to be alone, relax, just concentrate on myself and nothing else. And there’s nothing wrong with that, it’s perfectly okay. (I’m just stating that here to make myself realise it, I’m sure you all know that already) I don’t need a life full of activities, a calendar always so booked I don’t have time to just be, I’m happy when I can do things at my own pace. I just need to stop fighting against myself, I am who I am and it should be good enough for me, why should I even want to change myself into something I’m clearly not? It’s okay to want to bring out the best qualities in yourself, but to try to make yourself be someone you’re just not, it’s not healthy, right? I mean, if some traits do not come naturally at all (you always have to force them), then perhaps it’d be better to think of some other qualities to enhance, yes?

I think I’m irritating. I’m too intense, people don’t like that. When I find someone interesting (and this doesn’t even have to be romantic!), I want to know as much about that person as possible, I want to spend time with him/her, and I also want to be liked – what I dread the most is to be hated or avoided by someone I’d really like to befriend. Intensity scares people, they don’t know how to react and it’s sometimes hard to see the motives behind all the intense actions (I mean, intensity can so easily be mistaken for affection, and that coming from a person you hardly know – it is scary). But I don’t mean to be scary, I just want to be liked. I know my intensity is just a way of getting attention and testing my position in a group – I’m constantly seeking for attention or else I get a feeling I’m falling out of the group, getting left behind. It’s silly, but I still feel that I’m an easily forgettable person, so if I was to disappear, it wouldn’t take long for people to forget me completely. I sometimes feel like a shadow, like I’m transparent, unnoticeable. And that’s also my greatest fear – to be forgotten, unnoticed, like air to the people around me. I don’t want to just fade away without a trace and leave no mark on the people I’ve met, I can’t be that unimportant, right?

I had a very disturbing dream last night, it has been haunting me the whole day today. I’m not too comfortable talking about it, but I really must say that it seems that those things that have been bothering me or otherwise been on my mind a lot during the day come into my dreams the next night very often these days. Like a couple of days ago, I was worrying about painting my apartment and getting the fridge repaired, so I dreamed about those things the next night. And now this dream… it made me feel uneasy, even sad. I dreamed of certain someone, and this is really stupid, but I think I’ve developed a crush on this person. If I didn’t know better, I’d try to fool myself into thinking it would be flattering to him. But I know too well that isn’t the case, and I don’t want to sacrifice all the good things that have finally come into my life, I don’t want to cause any trouble, I love my job, my colleagues, the atmosphere at work, all those things are far more important than a passing crush. Still, that dream, that dream… it confuses me.

I don’t know who I am, what I am. I thought I did, I thought I had learned so much about myself in the past couple of years, but rather than learning anything I think I’ve just found a whole lot new traits in myself and never really tried to integrate them into the image I have of myself.

There’s the me at work, around people, in (most) social situations: joyous, sometimes silly, laughing, talkative, outgoing, self-confident, overall very positive.

Then there’s me, like now, alone: sad, brooding, melancholic, insecure, lonely.

I fear I might have given a completely wrong image of myself at work and now my colleagues won’t take me seriously anymore. They only see me as that silly and amusing girl and nothing more. Am I even that for real, or have I just created myself a role to play? A role that I now have to stick to, even though it might not be the right one for me?

Can I be both, positive and negative, can I have two opposite sides in me, or should I be either one? Because I don’t know, I don’t know what’s real and what’s not, who is that person called me.

I don’t understand myself at all. This is pretty frustrating to me. I guess I could do this a lot of different ways. I don’t really have a plan and I don’t really know where to go with this but I really would like to figure out who I actually AM

I’ve been making headway on this one lately. The plane ride to mexico city gave me a lot of time to free write, and to draw, and a lot of useful things poured out on the page.

So I ended up making my trip to EWU alone, but it helped with this one in that 6 hours in the car alone is a good time to talk to yourself :D