There are times when these sort of things happen and everything about me begins to feel like gauze placed outside in the rain. It is the feeling of disconnection. Like life and people are passing through time and sentiment, yet always seeming to unintentionally miss me. It is the overused image of a single person standing in the wind on the mountain. She is alone, but from where she is, she has, perhaps, the best and most perfect view of all the world. Each happening and corresponding location is spread out before her in an expanse of society. But it is far away - the colors lesser, the words inaccurate, the topics misinterpreted. Life warped by distance. What she sees is more of a rough draft penned by an semi-literate child, which reads, but does not read well. One might say it suffices. That the job gets done and whether or not it is willed, life will stumble on, fueled by repetitions.

You always hear those stories of survival. The ones where a man is sitting on Oprah telling the public about how he was once miraculously saved. He’ll detail the situation, saying

“I was just under the overpass, everyday I could hear people moving across. Driving, walking, biking. But no one knew I was there. And when I tried to scream, my voice was like fog fading into air.”

And I think that is more or less how I have been feeling. Sadly removed, remote, reserved. Emotionally diffident. Maybe you’ve noticed, maybe you haven’t. It doesn’t matter. There is nothing wrong with me. An urgency of abrupt nature is not necessary in attempt to restore my contact with life. I am not declining into depression. Not phased by a certain melancholy, or void of my virginal bliss which seems to be so characteristic of myself.

Upon meeting me, Jerod wondered why I seemed, different, I guess, then these entries. How one person can be such a dichotomy -- drawn down the middle into different camps of socially happy and melancholy recluse. I tripped on words trying to explain it. And I’m afraid, rather poorly managed to articulate something halfway interpretable (interpreted into what may be the better question.) When he asked me this, and I had no appropriate answer, I also wondered. Surely I must come of as faking something. Of either desirous of pity via writing with sullen undertones, or as trying too hard to be happy and accepted. But a facade implies a temporal quality. An insincere mask, which is inconsistent, because it often is raised and lowered. I will let anyone read my journals from years ago, and see the same thing now (with worse grammar). Run into someone from my past, and ask them who I was. They will most likely describe my social habits as identical to those of today. Although my personality is a contradiction, it is consistently a contradiction.

I am sitting in my room right now curiously musing all of this over. The only thing I can think to do is to write it out. So here is my attempt at answering Jerod’s (and my own) question.

It is my life which has shaped me. An obvious declaration, one made many times in varied contexts. Emerson will say “Life is my dictionary.” The existentialists will argue for outcome from experience. Rosseau will persist that we are born a blank slate, and must write our own stories in context with our lives.

I am an only child. I grew up in a perpetual state of unpopularity. This is not to say I haven’t always been outgoing --- I have. But because of the circumstances of my favor with the social hierarchy of “cool” and “uncool a.k.a. Jen” the extrovert in me was often stifled. All of this happened when I was younger, but I think it reached its zenith when I went to Grace, where I suffered through a few years of complete rejection. After that, I was home schooled, which translates into no life. It wasn’t until high school I found myself in an atmosphere conducive to interaction. Slowly, my opportunities for meaningful friendships increased. But they always fell apart. Silence was stability. I had a desire to love the world through my extroverted verve, but I did not understand the world, thus taking on introverted characteristics.

So one can see that at a young age, I began to feed my other half, augmenting my appreciation for isolation through reality. The fact was, I had no siblings to entertain me, nor nearby relatives to make use of. My social life was embryonic, premature, dithering up and down based on public opinion. My weaker side began to compensate for my stronger side, which was steadily atrophying as a result of not being regularly excersised. And thus I adopted the other shade of myself. My imagination emerged out of boredom, my heart popularized poems by Poe, my creativity took on ambulatory activities.

Over the years, I have maintained my adoration for loneliness. I have not grown past the stage of the poet, or the romantic, or the dreamer, the martyr who spends days in the dark just to feel like a literary heroine. One of my favorite poems is still The Lady of Shalott. I still recite it. I still sit by myself and think about the tragedy and absence of love. But in this bizarre and twisted way, I like it. I like feeling alone. I like being sad. I like the thought of romantically dying of heartbreak while Tennyson writes about me drifting down the river. The dark and lonely longing that pens itself across the sky. Why do I read books most people will never make it through, complaining halfway that it is “meaningless” and “sad.” Hemingway’s Farewell to Arms, Kerouac’s “On The Road.” This is the tragedy I find highly appealing and overwhelmingly beautiful.

Of course, I still have more vivacity than almost anyone I know. In the summer I sit outside with my cat, I go for walks feeling so content and beautiful just knowing the air is becoming imbued with honeysuckles. And soon the warm weather will hit in an influx of sun. I’m incredibly happy. I’m incredibly hyper, and social, and talkative.

Everyone who knows me will testify to my infantile appreciation for simple beauty and the euphoria I sincerely believe I am always experiencing in one way or another. (They will also tell you I am insane and have spastic tendencies which often result in an embarrassing incidents of me tripping three to four times a night while singing off key because I must express myself.) I can never seem to talk fast enough. All of these things, both negative and positive, are forever associated with who I am. There are two sides to everyone. Normally one is underdeveloped, and tends to go unnoticed . . . .

I guess mine was nurtured. Being inclined to drama, as I am, doesn’t exactly help, either. I thrive on any woes . . . . I use them for material . . . to histrionically script what’s going on with eloquent appeal to the reader. I like to make things sad, because I like being sad. But I love being happy. And I am happy. Day and Night. I am a solar eclipse.