An excessively long post: my internet wasn't loading, so I just kept going.

So I was thinking, today, (I like to begin my posts as if I were already part way through a conversation with you, (which is, I suspect, a plagiarised phrase), but the recording tape placed in the room by, perhaps, the CIA, has just clicked on, starting to tape in media res), about the way people relate, and how I think about people.

I think perhaps that my approach is flawed. I was talking to a friend of mine the other night, and they seemed irritated with me, although I had absolutely no idea why. And though I always enjoy their company, and the mere thought of these friends is often/has often been enough to make me smile in sad times, it seems that the idea of them has been temporarily poisoned. (Well, made unwell, anyway, more like food poisoning than arsenic of hemlock or similar) So instead of getting that pink fuzz to my thoughts when they come up, today I feel more like a dull mental ache. Why is this? Why were they irritated with me in the first place? Were they? (I think so, I questioned other people for third party stability, in order to have them say something comforting like "no, your paranoia's just getting worse", only to have them confirm my apprehensions with their similar impression).

More importantly, why can't I handle that with a little more aplomb? Am I just a fundamentally irritating person? People around me aren't very often irritated with each other, but it seems to me that when people are irritated with someone or something, it's usually with me. Or else I really am paranoid (which is an entirely other stressor, we did paranoid schizophrenia in Abnormal Psych a few weeks ago. It was awful. If you believed that people around you were coughing to express hostility ad dislike, then by the end of flu season you'd be damn near suicidal, and this was the belief of one guy we studied).

And what if I am just an irritating person? What can I do about that? Maybe I just have no social skills and ought to just live in a box alone somewhere, with just one friend/aquaintance/employee/human contact/whatever to bring supplies, until they, too find me so tiresome that they just can't take it any more.

But this is, in all likelihood, all in my head, so perhaps disregard all that, and recall that I type at 1am.

Quite probably I'm just hugely over-interpreting. This does tend to be a bad habit of mine. Maybe I need one of those wanky mantras "Your friends like you. That's why they're your friends."

Although that really wouldn't help, surely, because if they didn't like you, what could they do? We knew someone like that in high school. Someone who sort of attached themselves to our group and whom no-one much seemed to like, but whose feelings no-one wanted to hurt. (I still feel guilty for so even articulating that. I wonder what happened to the poor girl? Can she shop in Burwood again yet?)

So if the people I talk to didn't want to hang out with me, how could they politely solve their problem? Which is a destructive line of thought, because the answer is to do things like 'not invite me out'; and 'only come over when they can't much get out of it'; 'find some way to avoid interaction, by for instance, going to sleep whenever we hang out'; 'be strangely closed off and not share details of their lives'; 'introduce me to people as "this is Tim's girlfriend, I've told you about Tim"', (which has the strange subtext of "but I never mentioned her", doesn't it?) or say things like "I'm closer with these other mutual friends of ours than you guys" even though those people rarely show up to shared social interactions, which leads in turn to the question: do you guys then hang out together and not invite me? Or is their even minimal presence so abundantly preferable to mine/ours that quality triumphs over such great quantity of time spent in our company?

None of which musings are good for me, since this has all happened to me within the last few months. I don't really interpret it so, but I feel that I have to beware lest I put a mental foot wrong and slide down the steep and slippery slope of paranoia into the dark pit of self-imposed isolation which lurks at its base.

I feel for other of my friends, who seem to feel excluded even when everyone else is enjoying their company and presence. To feel like an nth wheel seems terribly destructive. I unreservedly apologise to anyone to whom I have ever given such an impression, and assure you that it was not meant so. It is a strange and terrible thing how groups of friends, not only large ones, like our 13 school friends, but also much smaller ones, will divide slightly into little subgroups of twos and threes.

This is particularly a problem in the little groups, I think, when people pair off, starting by just being a little closer, and culminating in being so involved and absorbed in each other that no-one notices the person or people who they've left out in the cold tundra of sitting-in-silence-with-your-friends, but all alone. I realise that this is something that I have occasionally (or even, I am ashamed to say, often) been wont to do, which distresses me, and fills me with guilt. This is not ok. It's just terrible behaviour, and I wish I could more effectively safeguard from slipping into such a mode of behaviour.

I don't know, this is an entirely unjustified amount of introspection late at night, all on the basis of one person snapping at me a couple of times.

In completely other news, tomorrow (well, today, now) is the Blue Moon festival in Newtown, a celebration of all things gothic and new age, and discounts are available from all sorts of nifty shops, and I have high and unfounded hopes of buying a great necklace. It's terribly exciting, Catie and I are going to wear black and try to fit in, and hope that no-one will be on to our poorly executed ruse, and cast us from the suburb shouting "fie!" at us. Should be fun.

Gaah! 1:45! I have to get up and de-furnish my room for Blasted Felix tomorrow before 8! I had best get some sleep.

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Since this failed to post yesterday, I will just add an addendum (I just wanted to use the word addendum, really) on the cool day that was today. It’s funny, on re-reading the stuff I typed last night, 2 things are apparent to me: Firstly, typing at 1 am lends a strangely hysterical edge to one’s text: I should bear this in mind for future essays. Secondly: A flippant tone of voice doesn’t come across well in print That reads much more seriously than ‘twas meant. Try to mentally insert a laughing tone of voice and hyperbolic gestures, if you would. I don’t really take this all so seriously. Although it does make me want to go back in time to last night and hug me. And possibly to gently pry the keyboard from my sleepy fingers and put myself to bed earlier.

Anyway, today, we got up and had to deforest the lounge room and move our beds out there. The house filled rapidly with vaguely familiar film crew type people who remembered us better than we did them. We made toast for them, and tea all round, due to being just excellent people and hosts (in fact, Catie reckons she heard one of them telling Felix that we ought to win some kind of flatmate of the year awards. Yay!)

At which point, Catie and I got dressed for our day, which was scheduled to involve the Blue Moon Gothic/Alternative Festival in Newtown. Between us, we must have put on half a kilo of eyeliner and dark lipstick and so on, and long black coats and purple-lined cloaks were all the rage. Cat had black jeans and studded belt and black top with cape and eyeliner. I made up for my normal jeans with a studded collar and about 2 to 3 times the already excessive amount of eyeliner Catie had, as well as my long black coat. Was pretty funny, we wandered out of the room in pastels, and re-entered as impressive Goths. Scared Felix hilariously.

We went to Glebe markets, because that’s what we do, although there weren’t as many stalls as usual, presumably because of the weather. Then we met Cat’s sister Sylvia, who, in a mauve top, looked mildly shaken by our appearance (which was amusing, since we’d pretty much gotten used to it by this point, and weren’t jumping whenever we caught sight of each other any more), and had delicious pizza for lunch. We wandered around Broadway momentarily, then dragged the poor thing to Newtown.

As usual, the people-watching in these areas was excellent, but today, doubly so. People who were not dressed gothically were about as common as people who are, on a normal day. It’s interesting, actually, we think of them as people in black, but there are so incredibly many varieties of things to wear, it seems, for such people. There were huge high boots, and guys in eyeliner and lipstick, and girls in corsets and ruffles, and Victorian collars and plunging necklines and all manner of things.

And, and an actual real honest-to-goodness goth in a long black skirt and petticoat an corset and high boots and the whole deal complemented us on the cloak. While drinking blood-orange-lemonade ($1 a cup, festival special).

The shop we’d actually gone to see, Les Cabinet des Curiosities, was something of a disappointment, Not that it was uninteresting (far from it, no shop with a woman in a PVC corset, and long, black, ruffled, but still also PVC skirt pushing a pram with a little baby all in black and lace, could ever be uninteresting), only that my foolish dream of me walking in and them saying “Ah! Here is exactly the thing you want, for a ridiculously convenient, nay generous, price. Would you like it wrapped?” failed, surprisingly, to eventuate.

It was cool though, all these goth parents about the place, and all their children in their tiny goth outfits, mini black boots and all. What do these children do when they grow up and want to rebel? Wear pastels?

Eventually we left, and took Sylvia to see Glebe markets as well, because she’d never been, and it was wonderfully windy, and people were packing up, and I got a very cheap pair of very OTT earrings. Then we (nobly) took Sylvia all the way home and came home ourselves, to find the house more or less back where it ought to be. Brilliant.

It was interesting though, Felix was talking to his friends, while Catie and I pottered about the room and hung pictures/made drinks etc, about how he needs a girl for his shoot tomorrow, just to walk past the camera. It’s a terrible problem for him, all the girls he knows are busy tomorrow, you see. He’s quite desperate for a girl any girl, really, just to be a backdrop person to add texture to his film. Just as we were about to suggest that we could, perhaps, help, if the situation was really as dire as all that, he says “I just need a pretty girl, to coincide with the voiceover about watching pretty girls walk past. Damn, they’re all busy, every single one that I know.” Which meant that to say “well, I’m not busy” would have sounded vain and awful. But he didn’t ask us. Either of us. This seems to me to be a staggering breach of tact. The very least he could do would be to pretend he needed a blonde or something. It seemed that there was a yawning gap in the conversation which was pointedly being not filled with “Are you busy tomorrow, Catie?”. Instead he says “she doesn’t even need to be that pretty, I mean Semi-pretty would be enough”.

Which seems wrong to me. If that’s what you think, then don’t discuss this in front of us, I feel.

It amuses me, though, once upon a time I would have been personally insulted by this. But this evening it just seemed to me that he was being rude to Cat. Possibly have grown up into realisation that I can dress as well as I like (although I rarely do), but I am not, really, “pretty”. I remember being told when I was little, that I had “quite an attractive face, really. You can see the intelligence in your face”. Which was nice, I suppose. (I hasten to point out that any “aww, I think you’re pretty” comments will be shot down in flames. Don’t mess with me just when I’ve come to a mature acceptance.) Cat, however, is fairly archetypally pretty.

The two take-home points of this episode seem to be (a) Felix was being painfully tactless, and if we didn’t fit his requirements for some other reason, he ought to have mentioned this, and (b) perhaps I’m finally growing up, although the yesterday part of this post would seem to suggest perhaps not, and (sub-point bII) I really amn’t pretty. One can have good days and bad days, but I guess sometimes you just have to recognise your limitations.

Anyway, I shall attempt to resolve not to be over-sensitive and paranoid, but also not to be irritating, and if, sitting around in a little group of five, I again catch myself ignoring people, especially if the other pair is doing the same, I resolve to be a decent friend and not bar anyone by accident or design.
So there you are: the post is way too long, but perhaps we’ve learnt something. Or I have, since I’m the only person who will have read right through.