Why is it that the majority of my male friends are better at relating and talking about their feelings than I am? They can specify what hurts them and what makes them scared in the five minutes it takes me to figure out how to wrap my verbal skills around whatever it is floating around in my head, neverminding the uncomfort and immaturity I feel when trying to then convey it to someone else. Intellectually, I'm 22. Physically, I'll give myself 19 (22 with my hair down and a smidge of mascara). Emotionally, I'm a barren twelve-year-old.

Knowing how to identify what I'm feeling, and why, is a fine skill that I don't quite have down; it takes a professional who knows the right questions to ask to get it out of me. Back in the spring, when my emotional energies were so clearly focused on not freaking out about possibly having multiple sclerosis amid trips to the neurologist, it was easy - I was dealing with something specific, I had support, and I trusted that support and their genuinity (is that a word?) -- Dr. Shippey had to care. It was her job. I had a reason to need support. I had a reason to lean on someone else.

But now, when there's nothing clearly wrong and I have every reason to be lost in happiness and security, it's difficult to trust why someone would care what was going on in my life. So I stay gaurded, fearful that I don't really understand how I feel so why bother trying to explain my unknown to someone else? Especially when I have no clue where to even start or what words to use to get me there. I know, friends are friends because they care, blah, blah, you have to share with others for a fully balanced friendship, blah, blah, I know people care about me and don't care how confused I am it's just the process of sharing that counts. I don't want to be a burden when other people have more pressing, real things to be worried about.

But I honestly don't know what to share - that I'm absolutely terrified of meeting someone who I really, really like because I won't know how to give to them what they give to me? Or that I'm absolutely terrified about hurting someone again the way I already have? I'm absolutely terrified that I don't know how to understand my own heart when it comes to this stuff - I've buried it so far down to prevent myself from being sad that I've lost it and don't know how to trust or feel it again. I'm scared of being rejected. I'm afraid of not being rejected and messing things up. I'm worried that my own mistrust for myself will prevent me from trusting the people around me. So I'm closed off, because for right now it's just easier that way.

Tonight Jody said that he thinks love is logical, in that you decide to love someone else or to let them love you. But I want to know how you actually do the act of deciding to love someone else? How do you know you're falling in love with somone, that it's worth trusting more and more and giving more and more? Because it happened accidentally last time and I never knew it was happening until it was too late. Sometimes it just seems easier to think about being selfishly alone forever. I've never been one to take the easy, less challenging way out, but there's just something about this genre that I can't handle or understand. I'm such a confident, strong willed and strong minded person when it comes to school or work or personal ability or other Life stuff, so this dichotomy is all the more distressing to me. Ugh.

I wish Love could be in a computer language that I could code, I could dissect and piece back together in a more sensical way. I write some simple math, like

love(time)=boy+girl
boy=constant
girl=constant

relationship=boy(y) + girl(x),
where x, y=effort

Or something. Anyway, to something I do understand. Which is that I'm nervous about my first physical since my G.B. diagnosis (here or here) in April - I know that nothing's wrong and it doesn't matter or affect my life anymore, but it's still scary to go back to the doc when the last time I was poked repeatedly with a intramuscular needle thing that measured my nerve responses to electric shocks. Hopefully I'll be able to extend my record 2 blood withdrawals without fainting.

Oh! If anyone has been tempted to come visit me in New Orleans (it'd be fun!), Airtran has a sale right now until Nov 10. Pretty cheap flights from Fl and Atl.... hint hint :) (and to Cali, so Jonny I'll be calling you soon :))

Goodnight, World!