Uncomfortable difficulty

     Right now, I feel like I'm wearing clothes that are way too tight, and I just want to wiggle right out of them.  It's so hard for me to sit back, to give space to those who need it, and not feel cast aside. Two weeks of this, and I'm just plain antsy to reconnect. I am an extrovert; with few friends yet in Anderson, I struggle with this. I feel torn between needing people around and not wanting to take up too much of anyone's free time. I feel both guilty and hurt. I don't want to be that lecherous person who is always hanging around, draining everyone with her dependence, but man is it hard for me to be able to bear under-stimulation and a lack of community. 

     I wish I were more outgoing, but the truth of the matter is, the moment I meet someone new, the former is how I feel all the time. I feel like an intruder, or extremely socially awkward, or incredibly old. I feel, in college, now, like the college kid who never left the high school parties and group of friends -- the person that just needs to move on with her life. It's just that, I'm HERE, in limbo, waiting to move on, but still here in Anderson for another whole year. Eh, who knows?

     I've just started reading Winesburg, Ohio (© 1996 W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.), written by Sherwood Anderson for 20th Century American Lit. (It has the earliest publishing date of all the books, so I'm just hoping that I picked the right one to start with.) In the introduction, "The Book of the Grotesque," the author writes: 

          That in the beginning when the world was young there were a 

          great many thoughts but no such thing as truth. Man made the 

          truths himself and each truth was a composite of a great many 

          vague thoughts. All about in the world were the truths and they 

          were all beautiful . . . 

          It was the truths that made the people grotesques. The old man 

          had quite an elaborate theory concerning the matter. It was his 

          notion that the moment one of the people took one of the truths to 

          himself, called it his truth, and tried to live his life by it, he became 

          a grotesque and the truth he embraced became a falsehood. 

          (Anderson 6-7)

     Do the ideals and ideas we use to frame our lives around reality actually cloud, instead of clarifying the truth we seek? Can we take something too far, trust in something so much that we warp it to our own reality? Is it possible to believe something we've read or been told or come up with ourselves and add more credibility to it (in our minds) than there was in the first place? 

     I don't know if my perceptions are accurate or not. I may be entirely off base, right on target, or only partially right. I do know that I've placed great stock in these perceptions; most might argue that that's an understatement. It's why I'm so shy around new people, why I have a hard time allowing acquaintances to become friends, and such success with the reverse (if you can call that success). I'm constantly plagued by these feelings of awkwardness and intrusion. And yet, I'm equally cursed (and blessed!) with a need to be in community. But just maybe, I can and should let some of the reliability I've forced into these "truths" diffuse out of that tight, little box. 

     Back to that Sherwood idea, I think we do allow ourselves to destroy small "truths," what I would actually call brief bursts of insight, by dragging them out, destroying their very shape and texture as we display them proudly (or in the very least, under mantric compulsion) on our shelves and write them into our internal constitutions. At least, I know I do.