Mission 006: For once in you life, be honest

Kate. Wednesday. Insecurities.

Danielle, I know I give you a hard time over your height sometimes but if I'm completely honest it has never felt like a big deal to me. When I think I you I don't think 'that small Asian girl'. I think of all the great things about you and of the fun we've had together. Obviously like you said, this is because I've had time to get to know you and your international-basketballer-sized personality. And I don't think I'm being overly optimistic about human kind when I say that I don't think anyone judges people based on their size. Sure, it counts for a first impression but they don't last very long, almost as soon as you learn something of the person's personality you forget their appearance. Or maybe that's just me?
Also I've totally felt the seriousness in classes this year and it's worries me a bit that I won't keep up too. It's so weird how much people have changed their views on school work.

Orla I don't know what to say to you because I can only imagine what that feels like. It think I speak for everyone here however when I say that if you ever need anything you only have to ask. Let Orla hear it guys. And then we all, in a monotone, said, "We're here for you Isaac *cough* I mean Orla."

At the moment I don't think I've ever been in a better place in my life. I have an amazing bunch of friends, I have academic goals that I can see myself achieving and I'm happier than I ever remember myself. I'm also feeling pretty confident in myself for a change, though I don't expect that will last. But this is how I've felt for most of my life:

I grew up living on the edge of things, never feeling a part of anything. I never fitted in with my 'friends' and we never had the real kind of connection that defines friendship. But never having an experience of anything else I didn't know that at the time. I didn't even realise I was unhappy with my situation until I got out of it and found something better. I tried so hard to fit in because I thought if I became like everyone else life would be much better. But it scared me. It scared me so much that I might never improve and never become 'better', that life would never become desirable and one day it would all be too much for me to bear.

This all arose from my biggest insecurity and it made me so strongly aware that there was something wrong with me that I needed to change. I've always had trouble speaking to people especially those I don't know. And yes no-one finds this easy but most people don't spend the best part of their life stressing over how they will end up alone because they are unable to talk to a single human being. Even now it terrifies me more than I can convey. I wish so badly I could find it easy to hold a conversation, even to get one sentence out with a stranger. It freaks me out so badly. It's as though there is a part of my brain that never developed and prevents me from living a normal life.

I'm not even a clingy person. I like being alone a good amount of the time and I don't need to be constantly surrounded by people. But at the mere idea of complete lonesomeness I feel sick in the pit of my stomach and my mind starts to stress out drastically.
It's more than basic shyness, it's a physical sick feeling whenever faced with social interaction of any kind. My palms get sweaty and my heart beats alarmingly. It has taken me years to gather together enough courage to even answer a teacher's question or ask my own. No matter how much I might want to talk to you sometimes my mind just can't function that way and all possible conversation freezes over in my brain.

I constantly worry that I will leave school and never make another friend. That I'll be forced to seclude myself from society to avoid a mental breakdown anytime someone speaks to me. It makes it worse when I try to understand how I made the friends I have today. You guys are the funniest, most interesting and intelligent group of people I know but I don't honestly know what I did to get you as friends. I don't suppose that there is a set method to making friends but it would be a help to at least know how it happened the first time round.

Even people in my year who I've known for the past four years of my life and seen them every school day of that time, it still takes an inhuman amount of effort to get a short conversation out. But I've lived my whole life like this so I've gotten ever so slightly better at it. I find that it's easier to talk to other people when I have friends around me and I don't know if this is because they give me more confidence which would suggest it's a psychological problem which was my opinion anyway. I don't know where it has stemmed from however because it has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. It's definitely improving though which gives me hope for the future. 

I surround myself with an air of indifference to try and convince myself that every moment of my life is not a struggle of anxiety behind my mask. To a certain extent it works, I've managed to successfully believe that I don't care about a lot of things but talking to people is not one of them. I'm constantly trying to analyse peoples actions, deciding what they think of me, do they like me, are they real or are they fake. I think I need to know how a person really sees me to feel comfortable talking to them. Which would be another factor to why it takes me a painfully long time before I can consider someone my friend. I have a lot of problems.

If the world was a wish granting factory the first and possibly only thing I would wish for myself would be to have the ability to talk freely to people. To have the liberty to decide who I want to talk to without the fear of looking like an imbecile who can't say more than two words.

MISSION...........................................................COMPLETED