Saturday, July 15, 2006 // 12:52 AM

today felt decidedly strange. hanging out again with the yfers, after a week, after this change of focus, where my mind is concerned, is strange. seeing terence, his being funny coupled by my inability, today, to reciprocate, jeannette and remembering that we have weekday lives. why does that thought come to me? i don't know. i was already massively tired going down to meet them, but not so much physically tired as emotionally tired, i don't know what this week has done to me. i'm probably a lot more stressed than i think i am, right now, because. because i have so much on my mind, because sometimes in the middle of the conversation i just want to stand up, and leave the table. which i did, a couple of times. the first time i walked into a christian media shop and leaned against the shelves, listening to the music playing over the speakers. second i walked into a second hand bookstore and just stood there, couched by the smell of ink and paperbacks, and just breathed, for a while. and picked milan kundera off the shelf, read a page of his prose, calm and lulling. what i really want to do, i want to sit down with one person (none in particular, really, instead of ten, you and a cup of coffee and hours to kill, tonight, friday night, not a care in sight. and okay fair enough, because i wandered off into a conversation with daryl, wandered off into spotlight with sebbie, and just lay there on the fake fur rugs, talking and feeling comfortable, until a little alarmed lady told us to get out please thank you very much. i. somehow i really would like a hug, but sebbie is slight and hurt, by the things i say about him. even though i am just being truthful.

i can't explain it, or. or i can.

i have had a lot to say, this week, and so little time, so little of myself, really, the end of the day, to say it with. in short, i feel like i'm losing myself, to Being Happy, to the Making Of Frivolous Noises, to Studying And My Designs On An Overseas University. yesterday perry compared me to holly golightly, and i really really really really really was surprised. to hear that. when jo called me a partygirl i thought it was just him, knowing nothing, but the more i talk to people, the more i think about shumay's there's no smoke without a fire, zhiwen saying how girl's just wanna have fun over the radio was totally my song, the more i'm starting to think that maybe i don't know myself at all. because i don't think of myself as a partygirl, not that i don't think of myself as a partygirl as all, but really, that has not been a big fat part of me so far, the way i see it. being happy go lucky as perry called it, is something i would rarely associate with myself, though when i think about it i see where that impression comes from, really. i very much like being mellow, doing mellow things. and actually my indignation at these various people saying these various things is probably an overstatement: i probably would enjoy being a partygirl. at least once in a while. dingo called me socialising, not realising that my idea of socialising is probably not very far off from his idea of socialising - i just like to do it more often. very very often. but being a partygirl is decidedly different, i... really don't know. i can definately see how i might like it, but really, how long can i go on like that, before feeling like i have become a cardboard cutout of nothing? a lot of loud laughter and nothing deliberated, on the inside?

and at the same time i really really do believe in having fun. when i said this to marvin (when was that? last week? two weeks ago? and it felt like an age ago, and comfotable like nothing i feel, right now) i realised how much i do believe in fun, even as a principle, which is not something i would have ever have thought of myself. i found out recently, that humour charms me like nothing else, which is probably why i'm so throughly pleased hanging out with sebbie, terence, marvin. and what marvin said last week (or whenever) about how people might not take you seriously if you didn't have a serious reputation, is making a new sense to me. does it scare me, people not taking me seriously? i don't need everyone to take me seriously, just a few people, and even then, maybe not all the time. i really do think this is a new development in myself, learning to have fun, to have a sense of humour. and then, and then i really do wonder what these things say about myself, sometimes i think, i suspect. there is something about myself that i am getting ever so completely wrong.

and i am afraid of going to america for university partly because i might lose myself. well i might lose myself anywhere, but when you're Having A Lot Of Fun, it is just all the more likely. and everyone keeps telling me how i'm going to Have A Lot Of Fun in USA, because of how agreeable i might find the place, and all that freedom, on a silver platter. i can see myself going crazy, i can see myself losing myself: my sanity, my Christian identity/character (which honestly is quite a peripheral right now), my certain likes and dislikes, the mood according to which i function. i suppose lose myself is just the same as changing, which i seem to do a lot. but there really are things i don't want to give up of myself, and i'm afraid that i might find myself convinced to do so. i see now, right now, how this is a very strange argument, and how. maybe i'm just caught in the middle of having to make that choice between USA and UK, and afraid on so many counts of so many things.

i told daryl that i want to fall in love with wherever i go to, i want to be charmed. and that is true, that is one thing about me: i'm a complete sucker for charm. and in the Knowing Nothing Much state of my informedness where USA and UK are concerned, UK does seem to be that kind of place. i. i'll probably be happy wherever i go, it's just that before that decision's made that i will decide to love (i know i will), it's a toss up process.

and this, a levels, university, is just about the biggest thing in my life now. it's strange, to find myself trying so hard to muster up the will to study, thinking about the letters i owe and the people i'd like to catch up with, and then stopping myself from thinking about these things, because I Need To Study. i never realised i had this much focus in me (or maybe not, then, because i'm still not studying). i don't feel like myself right now, i'm afraid of getting so stressed out with studying that i forfeit the clarity of mind, which is exactly what i'm banking on for so many of my subjects, all but one, really. barnard calls it wit, perry calls it natural intelligence (and is convinced that if i don't start reading my mind is going to stagnate), but it's really a very tempermental thing with me, because i am a tempermental person. this is something i'm tempted to forget, about myself, it is easy, really, when my confidence and over-confidence in myself is being bolstered from so many directions.