Is it funny how you just keep running into me?
I've been listening to your music for a while.

- Priscilla Ahn, Vibe So Hot

-+-

These are all things that I wish I already knew.

I frown at myself and remorse over the things that my past version has done to me.  We must find our threshold, and at some point, some time in life, I found mine.  I don't know when it happened, or why it did, but I found the moment -- the moment that I become a wallflower.

But I watched Perks, and it's true - sometimes, there truly are benefits to being a wallflower.  I feel like I've learned that the hard way.

In the end, you truly know life has gone 180 degrees when people go to me for flirting advice.

That's right.

People now ask me for flirting advice.

What the hell.

There is a certain amount of just… relaxation in being a recluse.  It is a beauty that I have long forgotten how to just appreciate.

In the end, the hardest thing would be understanding how to feel comfortable in my own skin.

There was a gorgeous day with a beautiful epiphany when something grand dawned on me -- I have settled into myself.  I, for once in my life, was at a place where I was comfortable with the person that I am.

It was a place where sincerity was sincerity, and laughter was laughter.  There was no rationale to it, there was no defense.   It was raw, and it was real.  It was me.

But laughingly, I had cold feet with myself.  It was like I was on the verge of leaving the groom standing at the alter.

It's hard, settling down.  It, of course, is not real -- people live and learn, they grow every day.  Especially in my youth, none of us are truly settling down with ourselves.  But even the mere belief, the very statement of, "I'm happy with myself," it's a commitment.  I never thought of myself as one afraid of commitment, yet here we are now.

Indeed, for one with ambition, that's enough to send shivers down the spine.  Chills beyond what the body can withstand.  To fit in my own shoes, to fit in my own skin.  It was surely a terrifying thought, enough that I wondered, I wondered about the alternative.

That I wondered, what if who I am… what if my own skin, isn't good enough?

You may ask, good enough for what?  What am I trying to prove?  Who am I trying to impress?

That's just the thing that makes me realize that these are illogical insecurities: I don't know.

I am learning much about myself, but I don't know yet what it is that terrifies me so much to be myself.  To settle, and accept myself.  To let myself be comfortable in my own skin.

I silently reassure myself, "You'll grow into it."

Until then, I'm shaking in shoes that are five sizes too big.

-+-

"C'mon, what's your secret?"
-- "Well, uh... when people ask me what I do, instead of saying, 'I'm a college student,' I tell them that I'm a scientist.  Gets them every time."