Feeling: like senioritis is returning
Listening to: "I am so resilient. I can bend and not break. Or I can break, and take it with a smile."
Reading/Watching: textbooks

"It's not the sale that you love, it's the sell." ~ Dashboard

I'm in both a psychology class and a philosophy course right now, so I get to spend six hours a week hearing about the workings of the human mind, inward and outward. It always gets me thinking. And part of the reason I've not written anything in days is because everything I've been thinking on has been said in previous years (600 entries, you're bound to repeat yourself sometimes).

So in the end, what struck me was not the words of Wundt, Freud, Aristotle or Lonergan, but those of Chris Carabba. C'est �trange, n'est-ce pas?

People deal with problems in different ways. Some will be completely open (and sometimes whiny) about explaining what's wrong, wanting to make it everyone else's problem, so that everyone else can fix it. If everyone knows, it becomes a community effort, and often if someone volunteers possible solutions, they're rejected as impossible. I usually despise these people, who make every day a drama, and never seem to talk to me without bringing bad news. It's as if they think they're not interesting without having something to complain about (which they probably aren't, but I won't go there).

Then there's the people on the opposite end of the spectrum, who say nothing to anyone, who internalize everything and let it build like a pressure cooker, because they figure it's no one's problem but their own, and nobody really cares or wants to know, anyway. These people scare me. They're the kind that usually wind up snapping somewhere down the line, when it's far too late to deal with the original aggravation, and bystanders who've done nothing wrong and probably don't even know what's going on wind up getting hurt. (I tend to do this with little problems, because I figure they're so petty, they're not worth discussing, and then they stack up on me and suddenly I'm a mess.)

But as hard as people pretend, no one really wants to keep it all secret. If I put up a front, it's not because I want to fool everyone. It's because I want to fool those who don't know me well enough to see through it, and therefore wouldn't be any good with helping me deal with it. "It's not the sale that you love, it's the sell."

I want to convince people that I'm fine, since most of them would just awkwardly stand there and ask, "What's wrong?" otherwise, and not know how to respond if I did answer.

I have to sell the shiny exterior, or else I'll have all the fake-nice prom queens in the world offering a lacquer smile and a Clinique-scented air kiss.

That doesn't mean I want everyone to buy it. Just means I'm waiting for a person who knows how to comb through the sparkly smoke-screen and find me underneath, without my asking.

The worst thing in the world would be to ask. And thank God for those precious people in my life who don't wait for the asking, who see where the glitter rubs thin.

Promise me I won't lose you next year, when life finally turns inside out. I'm already collecting our smiles like seashells.

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