Self-Awareness

She uses words like “flippantly” and “austere” but really is neither flippant nor austere. She keeps to herself and stews in a mixture of self-doubt and confidence; she is mature beyond her years and immature beyond explanation. She is always thinking, always thinking about when and where but never acts upon it. Then she talks and talks and can’t keep anything to herself. She is extremely open and feeds off her audience’s reactions. She is at once self-indulgent and self-effacing; someone who loves taking openly photos of herself but then is embarrassed when others see them.

She bites her nails down to the quick although she knows it’s unladylike. She is still appalled that perfect strangers are compelled to grab her hands away from her mouth, as if she is three and still sucking her thumb. As if she needed to be reminded of how juvenile nail biting is. She would still do it if she wanted, and she did. It increased in frequency during the workweek and subsided when she went on vacation. The significance of this did not escape her; rather, it troubled her. Such an obvious manifestation of anxiety was embarrassing. She knew all about anxiety and depression, manifestations, projections and transference. She could pinpoint exactly when she was acting out any of those things.

She lived in a state of constant monogamy for the longest time, modeling her life after those of her family members, believing that she, too, would find long-lasting love early, have an idyllic wedding and live out her twenties, thirties, forties and way, way beyond with this incredible life partner. But now she was 25 and sort of utterly alone. She had cheated, broken hearts, had her own heart broken, half-heartedly challenged the existence of God, went through fallow and fertile periods that were mostly hollow and landed in a heap of her own self-pity.

She is me, but she is also a little bit of you.