I'm a situationally shy person. Does that make sense? To me it does.
I went on a date with someone the other night - a guy I met at a party of some mutual friends. In pre-date discussions (we're girls! what?) my mutual friend said, "The two of you are SO different. Like complete opposites. He's SO SHY. And you're so NOT shy."
It made me laugh. Turns out he's not shy. And sometimes I am.
I thought of this today while doing some last-minute interviews. While working for the Weekly I sometimes wondered why I was even doing the job. I mean, I love writing. I love to hate editing. But I always inwardly loathed talking to people. I mean, I loved the talking part, it was the getting started part that drove me insane. I think I faked it decently. But there was always an inner process of pep talks that had to go on.
Maybe it also was linked to some kind of situational depression because lately I find I'll talk to anyone and everyone. I laugh louder. (Yes, it's possible.) While running my mouth to strangers lately I think, "What is happening here? Who is this person?"
Such mouth-running usually only occurred with the people I knew and loved best - hence, the quick judgment that I'm not shy. Which, as painstakingly described, is rather accurate.
I don't know what's happening. I suspect it's connected to the drastic, unexplained change in my hair texture from fine, shiny and (as my mother used to lovingly describe) "drippy" to coarse, full, kinky and borderline 'fro-ish. (I unleashed my hair last night after running at the gym and I looked like Tina Turner circa full-on '80s perm hair.) Everything is starting to hang out and let loose.
In speaking about letting loose, I've been captivated by the rescue of the Chilean miners over the course of the past two days. I wept when the first guy popped out. I laughed when the second, gregarious guy emerged. Every miner, every tear-stained reunion with family members was touching. It bolsters my faith - in God, in prayer, in humanity, in nations working together. It's pretty remarkable what can be accomplished when everyone works together - when we can put aside our difference for five seconds to create a kick-ass engineering marvel (painted in patriotic Chilean colors and flags, no less) to rescue a couple dozen guys from the bowels of the earth. It should be collectively appalling that we don't do this kind of thing more often.
And in news of things we don't do often, I started rifling through my parents' collection of old photos the other afternoon while returning some I had borrowed. I started looking at all of them and just couldn't stop. In one, my cousin and I were just reprimanded for each sticking a finger in the icing of my mom's birthday cake. I'm crying, shattered at being reproached. I'm a year old or so. A few photos later and I stared at a picture of me and my mom and realized with horror that it was her 30th birthday party. Through the photographs we were at nearly the same point in time in life - and yet so different. My career is in transition. I have no husband, no mini-me children.
I'm not quibbling with the timing or where I am. I've just never had the difference hit me so squarely before.
A dear friend who turns 30 this month e-mailed me this week saying this time has made him re-evaluate where he is. He's planning to climb Mt. Rainier. He also plans to fly around the world.
I've started making my third-of-a-life crisis list. Finish this half marathon in November. (Please post in the comment field your favorite "get up and go" songs as my favorite playlists are becoming stale.) Walk El Camino de Santiago. Travel to Ireland. Return to Italy - maybe stay. Fall in love again - with someone who loves me back and isn't afraid to do something about it. Do as much outside as possible. Finally use my creme brulee sugar burner. Remember the proper name of my creme brulee sugar burner (small blowtorch? close? something fancier?) Let go of my anger. Eat more veggies - even the weird ones. Keep flossing. Go camping. Enjoy a bonfire. Give away all the shoes I don't wear - maybe even the platform knee-high sky-blue glitter ones. Remain open to possibility, receptive to love.
Reserve the right to remain situationally shy.
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