The life and times of a normal university student

20 November 2010

Thirty Eighth Post

It is very late here, and I'm watching Star Wars V.
I realise that I just posted. But I really have nothing better to do. And this topic didn't really fit in with my last one, not that this usually bothers me.
Thirty Sixth Post was partly about my new stalker.
Thirty Eighth Post will be about her again, but in a different sense. It will also be about privacy violations and my need to feel validated.
First, privacy.
Here's a slightly rhetorical question: when you are sitting next to someone who has his or her mobile out, do you read whatever is on the screen of the aforementioned mobile?
No. No, you do not. You quietly avert your eyes and do something else that doesn't involve furtively watching your friend text.
This reaction has been confirmed by both my liberal roommate and my conservative vegetarian friend.
Onto my stalker.
She loves to psychoanalyse things. Unfortunately for me, she has this habit of over-analysing trivial things and refusing to analyse important things. So when I wasn't feeling talkative, she assumed I was mad at her.
Thanks to her reaction to my supposed irritation, I did in fact become irritated. But since lecture was due to start in about five minutes, I deferred my irritation. We sat in stony silence until two minutes before lecture, at which point she angrily demanded to know what was wrong.
Two minutes before lecture is not the time to start a discussion that can only end by examining the deepest levels of our personalities and discovering that they do not mesh.
My mental image of "huffy" is based on her reaction to my postponement of the argument. She kind of snorts, then her shoulders roll, her chest heaves angrily, and she tosses her hair.
Fortunately for me, I've managed to convince myself that I don't care what she thinks about me.
This brings us to my final topic: my need for validation.
I don't hang out with girls that much. My best friends are usually guys. I do have a lot more female friends on campus, thanks to living with twenty of them for nine months, but none of them imposed their friendship on me.
When I hang out with girls (especially those from high school), I always feel inadequate. I'm not horribly graceful in social situations; I don't do much shopping for clothes and makeup and purses. I'm not in very good shape, and I'm not exactly a stunning beauty.
But around my male friends, none of that matters (oddly enough). They don't make me feel unfeminine and awkward, or like I'm not putting enough effort into the friendship, or like I should spend more time with them because I'm neglecting them.
I'm finding that my new friends are much better at accepting people at face value and letting them be themselves without imposing restricting expectations upon them. This is why some of my favourite people are girls from my hall last year.
My best friends respect my desire to be independent and ask nothing of me except that I be friends with them.

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