I've never been the most open person, as in with my emotions and deep personal experiences. It takes me an absurdly long time to warm up to people to even behave like myself, let alone tell them my deepest darkest secrets. I become very awkward during heart to hearts, not because I don't care about other people's feelings or experiences, I just don't feel like I'm ready to share my own, nor do I totally know the correct way to respond. Even in every day circumstances, I use sarcasm and humor to deflect when things get too serious.
I could not explain to you why I am this way. I've never had a traumatic experience or a relationship that went awry. I love people and I love having friends. I want to trust and I want people to trust me. I just am not very good at the intimate kind of close friendship. I don't know how to describe it.
College has heightened this strange flaw of mine. In high school, relationships took longer to develop, so my irrational fear opening up never applied until the end of my high school experience when the group of friends that I slowly collected over my four years became like my second family. I wasn't spending every waking moment with the people I met at work, school, or during my activities. It was easy to balance things and keep it at a manageable and comfortable distance.
College is a completely different story. You become completely dependent on your friends. Relationships move very quickly. Best Friendships, while in high school might take years to form, can be formed over a single day. My inability to be completely and genuinely serious is glaring. I can't keep this up for very long.
For example, literally fifteen minutes ago a friend of mine was looking up this very blog to read some of my stuff. I, naturally, freaked out. I've put some pretty personal things up there, and as I've only known him for less than three months, it seemed way too soon for those things to become public. But isn't that irrational? I put these things on the world wide web, for the world to see, and I freaked out because he wanted to read my writings that anybody with internet access could look at? Plus, he's a friend who I value and trust, despite only knowing him for a short amount of time, so it is stupid to be so freaked out by his wanting to read some of my stuff. (See what I mean by things moving super fast? In high school, a person I've known for three months is barely an aquaitence.)
I'm glad that college has given me the opportunity to face one of my fears. I am a supporter of pushing the boundaries of your comfort zone to become a better and more well rounded person. All this post is trying to suggest is that I'm nervous. I don't know what to say, how much to say, or when to say it. I don't know how my new relationships (it has only been 92 days!!!!) will change based on this new information. I feel like everything is moving at lightning speed and I'm having trouble adjusting.
I guess the conclusion is that I'm weird and college is weird and hopefully those two weirdnesses can balance each other out. Who knows!
More updates to come!
Camille
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