Well. I've met my roommate.

She seems nice. But as usual, I've made a complete mare's nest of the situation. It's a long story---and I don't think I can explain it properly, anyway---but suffice it to say, I freaked out a little bit on her. I don't really know why. I don't think it was one specific reason, to be honest---a little hormones, a little stress, a little irritation and anger, a little fear and anxiety all combined with my inexperience with roommates and her particular approach to confrontation. But I've succeeded in coming across as an overly sensitive flake.

The irony is that the biggest reason for my overreacting arose out of my apologetic need to please...and now that I've overreacted, I'm apologetic all over again. Argh! I wish, just once, I was able to genuinely not care what others thought of me. I mean, what they think of me doesn't change my opinions or what I truly believe, but it definitely affects my actions around them.

I react to their assertions with anger, with laughter, with dismissal, with irritation, with silence, with apology, with mediating counsel, with pride, with disdain, with hurt, with worry, with fear. But I never, never hear them and just think I don't care about you.

Maybe that's a good thing. Maybe to think that is to be numb or hard inside, which I don't want, but I can't help but wish that every once in a while I could just not care. Or, conversely, that I could just accept that I do react. That I *am* emotional. That I do want people to like me and think that I'm kind and competent and clever...that they can forgive the things they don't like because somewhere, where they can't see, is stuff that's better, that's more important. That they wouldn't judge me.

Normally---ideally---I have a support system that reminds me I *am* kind and competent and clever. Ideally, I have people who See me and like what they see, and so it doesn't matter what anyone else thinks. But right now I go to work where I'm alone, I come home where I'm alone, and soon I'll go to school where I'm alone. And fresh from visiting family over the holidays---where I was *not* alone---I feel unbalanced, unseated from my self by this lonely aloneness.

Reassure me, please, that I'm likeable. That you forgive me my strangeness and annoying tendencies. That there *is* something better underneath.

.........................