April 20, 2005
small blue thing
I've noticed this trend lately of people I hang around frequently suddenly and abruptly noticing that I'm small. Not classmates, but my roommate, my "girlfriend", my best friend, people like that. It's been over the past two weeks that I've gotten a lot of "Wow, you're short/skinny / have such small hands/feet!" completely out of the blue from people who should really have noticed by now.
I am thin, that much is obvious. Thanks to me choosing not to eat or just eating ramen in lieu of having to eat cafeteria food, plus habitually walking to class instead of driving or riding the bus, my BMI is about 19.7 , so yeah, I qualify as skinny. Which is nice in some ways. I don't have to bother with more than a tank top as a bra. Not so nice to have some of my pants falling off. (I think the jeans that used to be my favorites shrank, though. That's my only explanation for why those are still too tight.)
Maureen, my roomie, once commented that holding my hand felt like holding her little sister's. I can amuse people, especially men, by holding up my hand and comparing it to theirs. More often than not they're astounded by the fact that they can almost fold their hands in half over mine. I also get comments on how small my feet are, as in "Wow, you have small feet!" when my feet are up on my desk in class. I'll give them that, since I have proportionately smaller hands and feet in addition to being small in general.
But seriously, I'm 5'4". Last time I checked that was average height for American women. Sorcha is eight inches taller than I am, so she can be forgiven her short jokes (until I take over the world), but Hans is only about 5'7" or 8".
I figured up until now that I was just a klutz, but now I wonder if there's another reason I always seem to be bumping into people. I think they don't even see me.
I also noticed that I have lost any small ability I once had to hold simple conversation with a stranger. I've started semi-stammering by inverting words and rearranging syllables until even I can't tell what the hell I'm saying anymore. I especially do it to punchlines. I don't know what's caused it, but it makes me even more self-conscious about talking to people I don't already know, which doesn't help.
People I don't know have always made me uneasy. I've always had trouble making conversation. But it's started to reach a level where I'm genuinely afraid of other people and dread having to talk to them, and I haven't been like that since middle school. And this is after I took a public speaking class and made an A. Oddly enough, public speaking isn't a big fear anymore. I did enough debate and such that standing up and opinionating in front of groups of people doesn't really squick me all that much anymore, especially not when they have to do it to, like in speech class. It's conversation on a personal, one-on-one or small-group level that's started to scare me.
I've never had this problem before now and it's really disturbing, to the point where I've started to wonder if maybe I have some kind of undiagnosed social anxiety disorder going on. I mean, I'm hardly one to try to psychologize every personality trait, and I've always been a shy, relatively quiet introvert, and I'm definitely not going to go on any kind of medication even if I do end up having something, but this is getting kind of ridiculous.
I am thin, that much is obvious. Thanks to me choosing not to eat or just eating ramen in lieu of having to eat cafeteria food, plus habitually walking to class instead of driving or riding the bus, my BMI is about 19.7 , so yeah, I qualify as skinny. Which is nice in some ways. I don't have to bother with more than a tank top as a bra. Not so nice to have some of my pants falling off. (I think the jeans that used to be my favorites shrank, though. That's my only explanation for why those are still too tight.)
Maureen, my roomie, once commented that holding my hand felt like holding her little sister's. I can amuse people, especially men, by holding up my hand and comparing it to theirs. More often than not they're astounded by the fact that they can almost fold their hands in half over mine. I also get comments on how small my feet are, as in "Wow, you have small feet!" when my feet are up on my desk in class. I'll give them that, since I have proportionately smaller hands and feet in addition to being small in general.
But seriously, I'm 5'4". Last time I checked that was average height for American women. Sorcha is eight inches taller than I am, so she can be forgiven her short jokes (until I take over the world), but Hans is only about 5'7" or 8".
I figured up until now that I was just a klutz, but now I wonder if there's another reason I always seem to be bumping into people. I think they don't even see me.
I also noticed that I have lost any small ability I once had to hold simple conversation with a stranger. I've started semi-stammering by inverting words and rearranging syllables until even I can't tell what the hell I'm saying anymore. I especially do it to punchlines. I don't know what's caused it, but it makes me even more self-conscious about talking to people I don't already know, which doesn't help.
People I don't know have always made me uneasy. I've always had trouble making conversation. But it's started to reach a level where I'm genuinely afraid of other people and dread having to talk to them, and I haven't been like that since middle school. And this is after I took a public speaking class and made an A. Oddly enough, public speaking isn't a big fear anymore. I did enough debate and such that standing up and opinionating in front of groups of people doesn't really squick me all that much anymore, especially not when they have to do it to, like in speech class. It's conversation on a personal, one-on-one or small-group level that's started to scare me.
I've never had this problem before now and it's really disturbing, to the point where I've started to wonder if maybe I have some kind of undiagnosed social anxiety disorder going on. I mean, I'm hardly one to try to psychologize every personality trait, and I've always been a shy, relatively quiet introvert, and I'm definitely not going to go on any kind of medication even if I do end up having something, but this is getting kind of ridiculous.
Labels: friends
# posted by Liadan @ 10:55 PM 
