Category: Growing Up
I’m Going Slightly Mad
I’m not good with feelings. I don’t like my own emotional reactions because I haven’t figured out how to control them very well. I really don’t like other people’s emotional reactions because they leave me flapping my hands in distress and making faces that apparently are not comforting.
Last time someone cried in front of me I tried to console him by offering my half-empty coffee cup and a fork.
It’ll Still Be Two Days Till I Say I’m Sorry
I think I may have a punchable face.
I can’t explain what makes it so punchable, exactly. I have a wicked case of RBF that is often misunderstood. Sometimes I get a little too into hockey fights and probably deserve a good punch in the face just to even things out. Maybe my freckles spell out “Punch Me,” but I never noticed because I always see them backwards in the mirror.
I’m not sure what it is, but lately it seems like a lot of people want to punch me. This surprises me because I’ve always thought of myself as the kind of person who should not get punched. In fact, I go out of my way to avoid ever giving anyone the impression that I ought to be punched.
This does not include the month after I saw “Rocky” for the first time, when I repeatedly asked my dad to let me take up boxing. In that situation I was literally begging to be punched.
Doctor, Doctor, Give Me the News
I haven’t been an adult for very long so I don’t have a ton of experience on the matter, but I do have a theory about adulthood.
It doesn’t exist.
No, there’s no such thing as an adult. When you were a kid, everyone you thought of as a grownup was actually just a slightly taller person flailing around and making stuff up as they went, hoping no one would notice. This theory terrifies and comforts me at exactly the same time.
Now I’m one of those people, so to help me make stuff up, I’ve been referring to an Ideal Adult who exists only inside my head. She makes good, grownup choices so I try to follow her lead. What would the Ideal Adult in your head do? is something I ask myself a lot.
I’m considering making bracelets but WWTIAIYHD is clunky.
Getting Better all the Time
What did you guys get for Christmas? I got food poisoning!*
And while some people (my grandma, mostly) pitied me for spending the holiday alone and sick on a couch 300 miles from my hometown, I actually had a pretty good time. And not just because I don’t like Christmas.
I mean, some parts kind of sucked. The nausea was not great. I think Hell might be a pantry full of junk food that you really want to eat but can’t because your stomach is on strike. But mostly I was happy. I made a tree out of books! I listened to Pandora’s Christmas radio station for nearly a full minute! I watched Ike try to eat snowflakes through the windowpane!
I dropped him once when he was a baby. He landed on his feet, of course, but I still wonder if these things are my fault.
Smells Like Teen Spirit
Everyone has nights where they lie awake thinking of every mistake they’ve ever made and cringing at the ceiling. I had one this weekend, thinking of something that happened when I was 15. It was 3am and Rational Brain — the part of me that should have said, “Look, Stephanie. That was 10 years ago. It might be time to let it go.” — had gone to bed at a reasonable hour, so it was just me and Crazy Brain hanging out in the dark, regretting everything.
Crazy Brain, as crazy brains are wont to do, decided that it was vitally important that I track down the journal I kept from ages 14 to 15 to find out what my teenage self had thought about the incident in question. Immediately.
Don’t listen to Crazy Brain. It’s crazy.
Listful Thinking 