In which a banquet forced me to confront my introversion

I went to Carleton’s varsity banquet last night, even though I’m not on the actual varsity fencing team. They put my name on the list without even asking any questions, and I actually just walked in and sat down at the table without even showing my ticket (luckily enough, because I didn’t have the ticket). Which is all to say that it wasn’t exactly an exclusive event.

        Anyway! The banquet itself isn’t really important, and there’s nothing really interesting to say about it. What is interesting, though, is what happened afterwards. I was there for about two and a half hours, with maybe a couple hundred people there. We were unlucky enough to get the table closest to the speakers, so the music was so loud you had to lean towards the people beside you to talk to them. When all the awards had been given out, I basically just said goodbye to my friend (and none of the other people I kind of know) and took off as quickly as I could. I’m sure it was rude and etc. but I just wanted out! So I left, and I’m walking around wearing a suit, and I was just so glad to be alone. I missed the bus, met up with a guy I kinda know and hadn’t spoken to all night (he was at a different table), and he knew the way to the light rail train station so we could get back to Carleton and I could take the bus from there.

        After we got off the train and he left, I just started getting incredibly tired, as well as an instant headache. I’ll blame that part on the music. The other thing is I started thinking about stuff I should have done at the banquet (actually socialized with people, for example) and being lightly miserable. Really just wanted to get home and crawl into bed. So I hopped on the bus and did that, and remembered that, oh yeah, I’m really introverted. And that’s what this post is really about!

        I don’t dislike people in general, and I like the people I know. I’m not trying to avoid you! Really! What happens is this: I need to be alone when I work, because it’s really hard to keep up three conversations and write an essay at the same time. When I want to relax, I prefer to be by myself. And then suddenly I’m “too busy” to sign into Miranda and talk to the people I know and love. And I say I’ll be around more often, because being alone all the time is depressing and bad, and then it doesn’t really happen. And that sucks.

        The absolute worst case scenario is when I either spend a lot of time with a few people (having friends over for the entire weekend like I used to in junior high and high school) or any amount of time with a lot of people (parties, banquets). Then I get mentally and emotionally drained, and it puts me off for a long time afterwards. When I went to the Halloween party in October, I was miserable literally all weekend. It isn’t as bad this time, though I don’t know why. I’m feeling mostly better, at any rate. Having a hard time getting settled in to work, though.

        Anyway, I’m pretty sure this is an actual thing that happens to people other than just me. Odds are it’ll seem familiar if you’re introverted, because I’ve realized in retrospect that it has pretty much always happened and I just never realized it until I really thought about it. Maybe you’ll notice it from now on.

        Ok this is getting long and I’m really just procrastinating. Tl;dr I half-ass an apology, rationalize my failure to socialize, half-heartedly justify my continued status as a hermit, and try to remember from now on to accept my introversion. Denial doesn’t really get me anywhere.

I’ve been thinking about something for a little bit and couldn’t manage to explain it last night, so I’m going to attempt to work it out here. I’ll edit before posting until I’m sure it all makes sense and I haven’t exaggerated anything.

        What I’ve been thinking about is how I’ve long had a kind of ideal image of Britt in my head, and that holding onto that was what kept me hopeful for a long time after we broke up. It’s not like I was completely deluding myself, just that I liked to think everything could go back to the way it was. Of course I knew it wouldn’t happen, but it was still a nice thought, and I had the odd dream about us getting back together and things like that.

        The problem, though, is that this ideal I had in mind didn’t change at all in the last two years, regardless of the ways she’d changed. In some way, I still thought of her as I did during the summer two years ago when (relatively speaking) everything was going well. Which isn’t really that horrible, as the worst consequence to come out of it is probably my consistent surprise at her unhappiness. My reaction tends to be something like “oh, I thought maybe it might get better…” because that’s just how I’d like the world to be.

        I started thinking about this a couple of weeks ago after a dream I had that, essentially, was really about this ideal image of Britt. I forget the details, but it was a nice enough dream, so take from that what you will. When I woke up, though, I realized that Britt isn’t anything like how she was in my dream - and that’s what made me question the fact that I’ve been doing it all along.

        Britt and I spent the day together two days ago, and that was great - I think it’s the only time we’ve expressly hung out as friends… At least, it’s the first time I felt that way about it. Essentially all we did was cook brunch, talk, cook supper, and talk some more. Fun seems like an overly exciting way to describe it, but I enjoyed the visit a lot and it was just good to see her again. What I wanted to mention, though, is that it also let me recalibrate the way I think about her. I’m one of those odd people who like the idea of platonic love, so I’m going to go ahead and say that I love her as a friend, and I’m happy with that. Despite the things that have changed over the past few years and plenty of disagreements, we still get along, and that’s awesome.

        So here’s to you, kid. These past five years have been wonderful. Looking forward to five more.

I’ve already posted that I’m with my grandparents for Christmas, and I ought to mention that Christmas is a religious event for them. Christmas, for me, has been purely commercial from a young age, without even getting into my lack of faith. They don’t mind going to Christmas mass - being stuck with far too many people in a hot, sweaty church listening to an excessively long sermon, late at night when you’d rather be in bed. I’ve been able to shirk the responsibility of going by way of my father a few times, because he isn’t religious either, but now I have no excuse.

        My mother, it seems, is either religious or feels compelled to be religious to please her parents - I’ve never figured out which, as she doesn’t really . She has tried a few times to bring us back into the fold of Christianity, especially around the accepted ages for first communion and confirmation, but eventually we’d get lazy and stop going. So I’ve had my first communion and I’ve been confirmed and I’m “a member of the Catholic church” and as I told her today I don’t want or need that status. And, I think, she feels like it’s her failing as a parent that I’m not particularly faithful.

        Earlier my mom told us that we would, in fact, be going to Christmas mass. A shame, really, because I was planning to learn Python at that time. Anyway, she took my brother and I aside to tell us that we would be going and we would be participating in communion (I’m sure that’s not how you’re supposed to say it). Some more backstory: I decided not to do communion at my brother’s confirmation, though I don’t remember what inspired that little rebellion. I know that I told my mom it would seem dishonest to do that when I don’t actually believe. At any rate, I told her that I would do the socially accepted thing and avoid making her look bad in front of her parents. She said that she knows we don’t go to church often, and that she’d like to fix that, and asked whether I would go to church with her in Ottawa. I said no, and that I don’t need or want it.

        The part that makes me suspect she feels responsible for my lack of faith, and that it’s bad/wrong for me to not be religious, is that she said there might come a time in my life when I want to be religious so that my children will have a place to belong. I feel bad about that, but I’m doing my part and going to church tonight. I don’t, however, have an hour or more to waste every sunday morning. Sunday morning is when I buckle down and do schoolwork. If I’m going to replace good working time with something else, it’s got to be worth more than whatever work I could be doing, like fencing practise.

        There’s no real moral or purpose to me telling you this, I just felt like making a post about it for the sake of exposition. So now you know, and my disk defrag is done, so I can get back to using my PC. My dad used to run a disk defrag overnight and forbid anyone to use the computer until it was done, and I guess I picked up the habit.

Cotton candy perfume

Here’s a bit of psychology for you. There’s a structure in the brain, called the limbic system, which is (as far as my first year course is concerned) the basic location of emotions. Completely unrelated to the limbic system is the thalamus, a central station for your senses that passes information on to the other part of your brain. So, the signals processed by your eye go to the thalamus, which sends them to your primary visual cortex. However, your sense of smell DOESN’T go through the thalamus - it goes straight to your limbic system, creating a pretty close association between scents and emotions.

        So I was going into my psychology lecture, and a girl in front of me was wearing a lot of cotton candy perfume. I was pretty confused for half a second (as in, where am I, what am I doing here), and then I came back and started to wonder why anyone would wear cotton candy perfume - would you be attracted to someone who smelled like a carnival? When we got into the class and I walked past her to find a seat, I was starting to enjoy the cotton candy smell in a weird kind of way. Still kind of confused about it, trying to form a proper sentence to explain my confusion, and yet there was a kind of attraction to it.

        I got to my seat, sat down, and while I was waiting for the lecture to start I worked on sending Britt a text about how cotton candy perfume confuses me. I settled on “you know what I hate? People who wear cotton candy perfume. It’s so confusing when they walk by :(” She replied and asked me why it was confusing, which I had to think about, and ended up saying “because it’s like wtf, cotton candy!? And I’m able to be confused for half a second by perfume.” Her response: “I used cotton candy stuff all the time. I always sprayed my room with cotton candy perfume.”

        I don’t want to beat you over the head with the significance of that and go into too much detail, but it’s so cool! As I told her, I didn’t remember that she always sprayed her room with cotton candy perfume. I couldn’t have told you that, if you’d asked what her room smelled like. But my brain knew it, and obviously I have a pretty strong emotional association with her room, because we hung out there a lot. So I smell someone wearing cotton candy perfume, and for half a second I’m just bewildered because cotton candy perfume = her room, as far as my nose is concerned. Then I lash out, questioning the reaction, and then it’s kinda pleasant and attractive.

        So now you know how to make yourself strangely alluring to me. Though if you’re actually going to try that, go with vanilla instead. So now you know that psychology is legit! I couldn’t make this stuff up if I tried. And this is in no way a plug for my excellent repository of notes.

The strength of heart required to face oneself

This is post #200, and I thought I should do something good with it. So I’m finally writing this post. Except now I know I don’t need to write as much as I planned. But that’s the end of this whole thing, so let me start at the beginning.

        I finally finished Persona 4 this summer, and I started over and played through the beginning a bit. I was really inspired to write an amazing essay for Destructoid about the game, the journey of the main player, and just the themes of the game in general. If I were to do that, though, I’d have to replay the game and get quotes and refresh my memory on things to talk about, so I lost the will for it. But I’ll write a little bit and introduce the game. I don’t remember how much this stuff featured in Persona 3, and I have no idea how much (if at all) it’s featured in Persona 1 and Persona 2.

        Everyone in the Persona games has a basic alignment with one of the Tarot deck Arcana, and the main character is always aligned with The Fool. Igor, the master of the Velvet Room who opens your powers to you and guides you on your journey, describes The Fool as “zero,” “empty yet full of infinite potential,” one who could become anything at the end of their journey through life. What this means is that you can be whoever, and whatever, you want to be throughout the game - taking whatever personality you need at the moment to help other people out. As the infinite potential goes, your character is the only one with the ability to “change” Arcana in such a way - everyone else is restricted to their innate Arcana, but your main character simply starts as the Fool and can change Arcana like one changes a mask.

        Everyone also has an innate Persona that represents their inner strength, which is aligned with their Arcana. Some people go blindly through their lives, never coming to terms with the strength they have inside. Perhaps they’re carried along by negative emotions, and never able to overcome them. Maybe they’re too apathetic to reach their own potential. Throughout the game, you change masks as you need in order to help other people reach that potential. It’s just a part of your journey through life. You don’t take any credit, you don’t make a big fuss about it, you just stand aside and support them so they can do what they need to do. With your general social links, you just help people along and at Rank 10 things are more or less resolved.

        It gets a lot better with your party members, because they also unlock the powers of their Personas. Igor describes the power of Persona as (something like) a mask worn to face the hardships of life. Persona 3 had a different system for unlocking Personas, but in Persona 4 everyone had to face a dark, mutated version of their Persona in order to unlock their inner strength. This dark Persona represents the big conflict in their life, something they need to overcome in order to get on with their lives. A weak person might give in, but to accept their problems and acknowledge that this darkness is a part of who they are represents true strength. After facing this part of themselves, they unlock the power of their Persona, and join your party. It might not be perfect, but now they have the strength to face their problems - the strength of heart to face themselves.

        So I thought to myself that I ought to write about a problem in my life that I might not have otherwise faced, and challenge everyone to find the strength of heart to face themselves - if they haven’t already. At first I wanted to write about the breakdown of my relationship with Britt, then the end of my relationship with her (which didn’t end up happening - we’re all fine now), then about my general status with girls. Then I thought about it some more last night, and I thought about the problems the characters in Persona 4 had, and I realized that to claim I needed to face myself would be stupid. I’ve already done that. My big challenge, the jump I needed to make, was the initial overcoming of my depression and associated problems. I’ve already done that. Sure, I’m not perfect yet, but neither were your party members in Persona 4. They still had growing to do, and so do I. That’s just how it is.

        I’ll need a few more level-ups before I’m as good as I’ll get. Maybe at Rank 10 (maxed social link in Persona ¾) I’ll get a shiny evolution. But I’ve already reached Rank 1 (just after facing themselves), and I’m working my way up. So yes, I’ve found the strength of heart to face myself. Have you?

Post-party weekend

(is that a bad joke about post-partum depression, I hope not)

        Alright so back from class, here’s how my weekend went after the party. This is some reaction to it, and some funny stories about Halloween.

        I slept in a bit on saturday, got up feeling like I sincerely did NOT want to be in my room. I figured I should sit in my room and study, but it was just not going to happen. My laptop was in the living room, by the couch, so I sat down there and booted it up. All well and good, then my mom gets up and is on her laptop and turns on the TV. Oh no. Television. Much as I hate it, it is there, and I end up getting distracted by it constantly. I spend a few hours doing stuff on the internet and talking to Britt about how busy I am and how I’m not keeping my promises to her and stuff like that. Savin’ it for another post. Wait for it. Anyway, eventually around maybe 1:45 pm or something? I got off my butt and went over to my dad’s so I could be alone.

        By 3 pm, I had showered and gotten my stuff organized, but no matter what I did I couldn’t really sit down and do any homework. My dad’s house just doesn’t have any place for me to work - I have no desk, the table is covered in crap, etc. I ended up accomplishing stuff by setting my laptop aside and using the piles of wood my dad had ordered as a desk. I knew, of course, that I could spend the weekend relaxing - but I needed to do work to keep myself busy while I was secluding myself, so I ended up taking notes on the fifth chapter of my linguistics textbook, doing the homework questions for it, and my french homework.

        Sunday, Halloween, I… hmm… I didn’t do much for most of the day. The most notable thing is, of course, trick or treating children. My dad bought candy - two boxes of 94 chocolate bars (two to each child) and two boxes of 24 bags of cheesies (do real people say that, cheetos seems like such an awkward thing to say - anyway, one per child) - so that’s enough candy for 130 children. We had 12 trick or treaters. Four children, eight teenage girls. One teenage girl said she liked my Born of Osiris hoodie and I said “eh, they’re alright” because alright is the best word to describe them. Other than that people just seemed to walk around in costumes without going to any houses. So now we have a disgusting amount of candy and I’m not sure what we’re going to do with it.

        My mom had at least 50 trick or treaters, when I last checked in with her, but according to my dad that was because she lives near a bunch of low-rent apartments - most of which are along the bus route that comes to Carleton. Huh. Well, kids. Around my dad’s it’s just old people and people with older kids. Does that mean he lives more in the suburbs than my mom? Ah well.

        Oh, and sweet story about the Halloween party:

        Near the end of the conversation with my coach and the two guys from Ottawa U, our hostess dropped by and flaunted her numerous assets for our benefit. But we would not be swayed from our riveting fencing discussion. After a brief lull later, one of the guys from Ottawa U remarked that we deserved a Darwin Award for spectacular failure to procreate.

        “Given the choice of finding an attractive female to talk to, or talking to a couple of dudes about fencing, we’re like ‘oh man you could try this, or try that’ and there’s hot women like right there! Right there! And we’re like 'fencing, awesome!’”

        edit: Oh and I watched The Trotsky (Canadian film) and the first three episodes of The World God Only Knows (subbed anime via Crunchyroll) while waiting for non-existent trick or treaters, and liked them both a fair bit. The Trotsky isn’t a must-watch, but I enjoyed it. You might enjoy it a tiny bit less if you don’t know french. The World God Only Knows is about a guy who’s pro at dating sims but has never even held hands with a girl, and he accidentally signs a contract with the devil to collect souls that are living in the hearts of girls by - of course - kissing them. If that premise sounds awesome, you should watch it. Otherwise I have nothing to say to you.

Halloween party!

Alright, so now that I’m done recuperating, I shall post about the Halloween party I went to on friday - the first real party I’ve ever been to, to tell you the truth. It was the Halloween party for Carleton’s fencing club, and members from the Ottawa U fencing club were invited as well. I’ll try to run through the night in a relatively linear fashion or at least an interesting way.

        This was the first time I’d been surrounded by so many people for so much time in a while, the last being my going away party in July. That was 8-10 people, and this was 16-20 people I think. The going away party was at a friend’s house, on a farm, so it was pretty spacious. This party was in a four-room apartment. There was a bedroom, a kitchen (drinks), a living room? (candy), and a side room that might have been a bedroom or a living room or… something (dance floor). A friend of a friend volunteered to DJ, so there was plenty of loud music to be had.

        When I got there, around 8:40 pm or so, there were only a handful of people there. One of our coaches, the hostess, another beginner, a dude I didn’t recognize, and a girl I didn’t recognize. People trickled in as the night went on, and I introduced myself/was introduced to everyone by name and by weapon of choice. The only new people I remember are the ones who introduced themselves after we had been talking for a bit, which consists of the two people who were there when I first arrived. Other than that, I remember no names. I think I should feel bad about that, but at the same time, can you blame me when someone says “hey I’m x, I fence with y, see you later man” and then doesn’t speak to me again? I know the faces I saw, but the names just disappeared.

        I spent most of the night talking to people I knew and the girl (Emily) who was there when I arrived, mostly because they saw me doing nothing I think. I was getting pretty bored around 10 pm or something and considering leaving, then got into a deep fencing conversation with the coach and a couple of guys from the Ottawa U fencing club, and that lasted for like 1.5-2 hours or something. So that was cool. Then our coach left, and “left me in charge” because I was one of the few sober people. A little bit after that I was asked to drive a couple home (they drove me home after fencing on thursday) and it took until sometime after 1 am to get the drunk boyfriend out of the party. Every time we’d try to leave, he’d get in the middle of a ten minute goodbye, and then wander off to do the same to someone else. But that was some good bonding time and anyhow I left sometime after 1 am.

        So I was there for… about four hours, and I ate way more candy and chips than was absolutely necessary. Oh, and I was dressed up as Jack Skellington, from Nightmare Before Christmas! Man, that was an important detail. I’ll get some pictures up in a bit. However, getting my face painted and everything made my room kind of a wreck. When I got home in the morning I really didn’t want to clean it up, and I was really pissed off about it when I woke up.

        That’s an important detail because I was pissed about everything when I woke up. I slept in a bit, but even that didn’t help. Maybe I was tired, or maybe it was the overload of junk food, but I don’t think it was either of those things - because this is exactly how I felt the next morning after my going away party, and exactly how I felt every time I had people stay the weekend at my place in junior high. True, any time those kinds of gatherings happened (I don’t think they really qualify as parties) I ate too much junk food and stayed up late, but I just think it’s too much time around too many people that really got to me.

        Essentially, what I’m trying to say is that I consistently forget how introverted I am because it’s socially expected of me to do these things and then it destroys me for days. It’s like an emotional hangover, or whiplash. Or something? Insert your own good metaphor. The moral of the story is I don’t feel any better until I stop talking to people and seclude myself and generally I have a hard time doing work, which means a party on friday eliminates my productivity for most of a weekend.

        I think vael has expressed a similar effect before, or maybe that was me. This isn’t the first time I’ve thought about this anyway. I’m just not sure if it was my idea or not. At any rate, it’s draining for me to spend time around people. I don’t know whether I’ll try to explain that or not when the fencing club inevitably asks me how I enjoyed the party.

        I think this post contains everything I wanted to say, though perhaps with less explanation than I planned, but I need to go to class now so that’s how my friday way. I’ll post more things later I think. I just don’t want to have one humongous mega-post.

BLACK COAT ANSWER

vael:

Anyone with a decent brain should attempt to answer this question and post it to their tumblrs.

Is silence more like: a fever, a voice never heard, or a question with no receiver?

I’ll post my response on Monday. Wouldn’t want to persuade any of you to my side.

Also “it’s technically all of them!” does not count even if it’s the rightest. You are responding not to be the rightest, but to make your choice the rightest among the three.

I’d like to see everyone attempt this.

        Back in the day, I used to write stuff like this (only two options though) for my personal message on MSN. I’d make up a new one every day. I stopped when I couldn’t think of anything else to use lol. But I think I kept it up for a few weeks.

        I don’t want this to be a huge essay or anything, but I think between those choices… Silence is more like a voice never heard. For a long time, namely since I got to know Britt, this has been a focal point in my life, the idea that there are millions of stories playing out around us and few, if any, are ever heard. I find myself wanting to be the person to hear those stories. So that, at least the once, they’ll be able to feel like they have a voice.

        There are two songs that have stuck out for me in name because of that, namely Voice of the Voiceless by Heaven Shall Burn and Rage Against the Machine (not even a cover, they’re completely unrelated songs) - that phrase, regardless of the individual song lyrics, is very appealing to me. A voice never heard, a person with no voice - relatively similar. I want to be their voice, then. Actually, that’s not quite right - I’m not really taking their problems to anyone else. I want to give them a voice, then. By stopping to listen, willingly giving my time when other people might not, it’s breaking that silence. Would things be different if their silences had to continue, left to fester and deepen? Would it broaden the gap between them and the opportunity to connect to people and find that voice?

        I want to be there for those people. I want to make that difference in their lives. Of course, it’s not like I can just walk up to sad-looking people and introduce myself. But I do what I can, you know?

        I don’t even know. Could be I’m making mountains out of molehills. All the mountains look like molehills in retrospect, though.

Give me the strength to move this mountain, to block this line of sight…

Roughly two years ago now, my girlfriend of nearly a year and I broke up. The stress from school and what I was feeling because of that got to the point where I felt justified in giving up, and so I did. I caved under the pressure, and I let myself go for a long time. I can’t say, really, when it was that I collected the scattered pieces of myself. Maybe it was later that year (end of 11th grade), or maybe it wasn’t until the middle of last year (12th grade) when AP English grabbed me and shook me around a little. Either way, my average slipped in 11th grade, before ending strong in 12th.

        Entrance scholarship money at my university is based on your marks for the first semester of grade 12 and all of 11th grade. Basically, my 90% average meant nothing, because their calculations left it in the 85-90% range. At 85%, you received $2000. At 90%, you received $3000. If that were a one-time sum, that wouldn’t be so bad. But it’s renewable every year, provided you have the right grades, and so that’s a “potential” loss of $4000. If I don’t manage the A- required to keep it (something like 83%, which I feel relatively comfortable with), sure, I decrease that potential loss of money, as if that’s a good thing. The end result is that I lost out on at least a thousand bucks because I wanted to be miserable.

        I cried when Britt and I broke up, which is something I don’t do often. Never with anyone around, though, because I had to put on a strong face to keep people from knowing just how little they really knew about our relationship. Sure, they knew I put too much importance on her, but they didn’t know just how bad it was. So I didn’t let them find out.

        I cried in public on saturday, and that’s something I haven’t done since I was eleven.

        But I can’t afford to let myself slip this time. I know the stakes now, and I know the consequences for even momentary lapses in commitment.

        I don’t expect I’ll go for professional treatment, though my parents have offered it repeatedly. It may be biased, it may be unfair, but I’ve always had a feeling that I don’t need that kind of stuff. In my mind, I think of it as meant for “other people.” There’s nothing wrong with the “other people,” really, and I have nothing against them. If that’s what floats their boat, then everyone’s happy. I just like to build my own little raft and set off into the unknown.

        It’s rough learning this stuff on the fly, but experience is a wonderful teacher. I gots my little raft a-floatin’ just fine.

        In retrospect, I realize that I hold an untraceable prejudice against psychiatry that has always been prevalent and problematic for the profession. It’s not something I’ve been taught or otherwise told, it’s just there in my head. I certainly don’t judge people who go for professional help, but it’s quite possible I’ve ultimately hurt people by unconsciously spreading my unrealistic philosophy of independence. Ho-hum. Something to think about.