Who am I? Why do I get so hung up on this? Why does the thought of clubbing produce such an immediate gut reaction? I don’t know I don’t know I don’t know… I hate it. I want to scream, to pound the earth, to run around and excise the energy. I spend minutes, dozens of minutes, growing into hours, staring into space trying to analyze the way I feel. Why do I feel this way? It’s only dancing. I mean, what the heck? Why do I have an identity crisis every time this subject pops into my mind?<\/p>\n
I thought about it a bit in the bathroom, and arrived at one possible conclusion–that the worldview and attitude towards relationship and courtship conveyed and portrayed in clubs is so different from my own that it’s difficult for me to feel comfortable there. I don’t know. All I know is that I just want to draw back into my shell at the mere mention of the subject, at the very thought of interacting with and around alcohol with large groups of people that I don’t know at all. I makes me INTENSELY uncomfortable. But then I think, people in very chaste societies, much more prudish than me, have been dancing as a means of courtship for centuries, in a plethora of different cultures. Why me? Why now? Why this society? It has to be ME–my own problem, or attitude, or outlook, or identity. What is the matter with me? Maybe I’m just a complete control freak, a tightwad, a prude, a wet blanket. My self-image gets rattled and almost shattered everytime I think of it.<\/p>\n
And the paradoxical thing is that I don’t want anyone to help me with it, either–I’m so insecure about it, and yet, I’m incredibly selfish and obstinate in my refusal for consolation. I don’t want to feel like it’s a weakness I have to overcome–I want to rationalize it away as part of my personality, which it is to a certain extent… And yet. I don’t know. So I sit here and stew, and boil over inside, and rub my eyes, and exhale strongly, and fidget, and can’t fall asleep–everything that indicates someone who’s really struggling with something, but I don’t want Dorothy, who’s sitting across the room from me, to ask me what’s wrong, because then I’d have to explain the situation to her, and she’d try to console me or talk me down or something like that, and I don’t want that.<\/p>\n
I don’t know what I’m feeling. And it frustrates me beyond BELIEF that I can’t figure this out and arrive at a conclusion that allows me to preserve everything that I want to. Fuck it. I’m just to go to bed, do what I gotta do tomorrow, let everyone amuse themselves on their own terms, and just do what I have to do, whatever that means. I’m just going to draw back into my own shell, be the quiet intellectual, or whatever the heck I am, and do my own thing. I just want to be alone for the rest of my life, and only let myself out of my own shell in very, very select situations. That’s my absolute first instinct, and probably what I’ll end up doing.<\/p>\n
Going on this trip with people who enjoy things different ways than I do was a mistake. Inviting Elyse was a mistake. Subconsciously taking responsibility for everyone’s enjoyment of France and in particular Paris was a fatal mistake–one I only realized this evening when Elyse came up and admitted that she thought this trip was a mistake. And I feel like I’m being bypassed as a source of consultation, someone who led us through incredibly boring and non-enjoyable parts of Paris today, and someone who puts a damper on everything that we do and participate in. Of course she didn’t say that; she just made some offhand mention of how tired and malnourished she’s been, but I know she feels like I’ve really let things down, and she has to take matters into her own hands and plan the next day. And I feel like a failure for that.<\/p>\n
And I shouldn’t. I shouldn’t feel any of this–that’s the crux of the matter, and that feeling assaults me incessantly, adding to the other feelings, and I hate it. I hate the way I feel right now, I hate the way that I can’t just sort through this with either myself or somebody else, and I hate that I won’t be able to fall asleep tonight for several hours and I’ll be wiped tomorrow, though I’ll manage.<\/p>\n
I just want the France I know. The France I love. The familiar France or La Cote D’Azur and slow daylight pace, and having food with French families and relaxing and taking things slow around the pool, and sharing our own experiences with one another and getting know one another through conversation, like we had tonight around the dinner table. I LOVED that, but Aaron was fidgety, and Elyse hates the family here, Donald’s up for anything (love that kid), and I have no idea about Dorothy.<\/p>\n
Fuck it all. I’m going to poke around here for a couple more minutes and then I’m heading to bed. Yep.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Who am I? Why do I get so hung up on this? Why does the thought of clubbing produce such an immediate gut reaction? I don’t know I don’t know I don’t know… I hate it. I want to scream, to pound the earth, to run around and excise the energy. I spend minutes, dozens […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1144"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1144"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1144\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2496,"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1144\/revisions\/2496"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}