love letter to my parents

something has come between me and the world that I knew
what I thought would last is falling apart in the face of something new
how can I explain that I had no choice?

The Spice Of Life
Everything But The Girl

(Find song in the player on the right)

I am seized suddenly with an uptightness, a grave insecurity. I tense up, my face looks sterner, and I can't think easily anymore. I am not relaxed, I can hardly follow jokes, let alone make ones. My brain goes into some kind of analytic over-drive. It happens because I pick signals. Signals of rejection. These perceived signals do not come only from women, they come from men, friends, colleagues, acquaintances. I walk into a room, relaxed and looking forward to the activity, and then an acquaintance tells me something by way of making conversation and suddenly I feel I have been left out. I feel I am not part of the A-group. I am being side-lined. Alliances are forming and I am not being sought. It kills me. My brain goes into overdrive. I begin to hate the person who told me what he told me. I hate them all. I can't stand the company I am with anymore. In an ideal world, I would walk away right then and there. But I have committed to the activity and walking out would look dreadfully unprofessional. Besides, I would rather not give away the fact that I have been slighted. Something tells me that perhaps I was being deliberately slighted. That the acquaintance who shared the "news" was in fact trying to tell me, subtly, that I have been left out. I struggle to regain composure: in between my forced smiles and join-ins are grim expressions and long-range, blank stares. It takes me a full hour or more, to get out of it. Even when I do, it is temporary, and I dread walking out to the road on my own. I hate how I will deal with it, how I will rationalise it and justify it, how I will tell myself to chill and not take things so personally, how I will water it down and recast the whole thing as an over-reaction by me.

It strikes me that I would make a terrible husband. Easily slighted. Taking to deep turmoil and sulks. Difficult to make happy. Unpredictable. Uneven in mood. My good moods would not be trusted.

I rarely feel like that when I am around my parents. They give me wealth. When I am around them, everything else that happens in the world is external, it can't touch me. Whatever happens is either an added benefit, a bonus, or an unfortunate inconvenience, whatever it is, it falls on top of that comfortable base of personal security that they provide. When I am around them, only they can hurt me and get underneath that deep security blanket. When I sulk because of something external, my dad can brush it off my mind with one of his warm, sympathetic chats, my mother can set me free and rest my tired mind with "just do [this] for me, your mother, do you promise?" And I promise. And I do. And it's gone.

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