04.17.03 - 11:14 a.m.

alright. heh. locked the diary, so now the audience is a big fat wopping one. namely, me. i needed to do that so i could, like, vent in here. or at least philosophize. or something.

today completely sucks. i'm having the hardest time concentrating. i'm like, altering between this tense ball of panicked energy and the desire to bawl my eyes out. which i wasn't last night. i'm not sure what changed.

maybe it's the panic at work, maybe it's just Steve's teasing on top of everything else. maybe i just feel vulnerable all over again.

i know it's impossible to control what people say about you, and i suppose i should... well, i don't know what i should do. i just don't know. i wish i could be less sensitive about this and less cautious, but it's not something i physically know how to turn off. trust is a deep, physical fear, perhaps because i'm convinced at the heart of whatever it is - beneath my arrogance and my grumbliness and my whatevers - that i'm just not worthy of much of anything, that if i'm exposed, i'll be found out, that if i'm not perfect, i'm not worth much of anything.

and i'm definitely not perfect, for all that i'm a perfectionist. how many hours yesterday researching polish nobility, when i probably could have made it all up. but that wouldn't be authentic, would it? and so, instead, i have something that satisfies me and is authentic but incomprehensible. no other person will ever read that, not even when i submit the character, but it soothes my mind to have it right, more or less.

not completely right, and i feel sort of bad about that, but i don't have time to go through the websites of 208 polish noble clans to find the right now.

it's weird how some clich�s are accurate. like, sometimes this morning i really have felt knife-in-the-gut. it comes just on the cusp of a panicked breath. of course, none of these feelings are flattering to me in the least. i should take things in stride, suck them up, not feel like this, but i don't know what to do with this.

it's weird, because this sort of sensitivity could also be the result of an overreaching ego, or some combination of the two terrible impulses. i don't know. i don't know how to talk to people who know, somehow. i just want to curl up in a ball and hide.

ugh. none of this has been made any better by the fact that steve has been teasing me all morning. heh. i'm not so good with teasing, i get kinda sharp. i suspect my reaction is amusing, since otherwise... he wouldn't do it this much.

some right-wing talk-show host is holding a rally for america and is going to have it here, so steve is really, really gleeful about it. i'm scared of the scary people who find it necessary to attend a rally for america, since i suspect they're the most anti-american of anyone.

anyway. heh. steve came in and told me i should donate a dollar, and that if i didn't, i was for terrorism. then he told me, i must wish pfc lynch had died, since i didn't support the rally. and, okay, that made me mad. heh. i think he got the message when i told him to stop, because he didn't repeat that one, but he hasn't stopped, entirely.

so, between the two, god.

i'm afraid of turning into my mother. she's so manipulative and so shrill, she finds offense so easily, in the smallest things. i hated that, i just... i wasn't ever beaten, or anything like that, but i lived in fear of my mother's displeasure. like, constant fear? it seemed like anything, everything, would set her off. i learned to hide, and to lie, and pretend, and liked my time alone best, because who knows what other people are going to do to you?

i don't think everyone would react like me. i think i must have some hysterical personality traits to go along with a tendency toward moping and whatnot.

bah, and not fair to blame my mother. she did the best she could. i'm just. blah. i hate this. i have to suck it up. i just sort of wish i hadn't chanced it, that it hadn't...

i don't know. it seems like the circle grows more and more narrow. when i need to reach out and expand it, i'm suddenly given the exact evidence that my lesser half needs to say, stay the fuck away from everyone, you'll just get hurt. hide hide hide hide hide.