Wednesday, September 12, 2007

Well, all it took was one party...

...to prove once again that I'm socially illiterate. Or... I don't know what it is. One moment everything is great, and then it just... isn't. Everything is wrong. Everything is distant. People around are having fun, but for me they and that experience are like in a different world. I tried to get back into it... maybe I didn't try hard enough. States like that are hard to come out of, because one part of you doesn't really want to. It's easier to just stay like that, just find some way to drown the feeling in something. I did try though, at least I tried to make it look like nothing had changed. I guess I've learned a few things about showing a good face this summer. I at least hope I made use of the lessons. It's weird how even in Tartu you can feel cut off from everyone around you. Though I know it's not because of the place or because of the people... it's just me. It's like the very opposite of everything I've been feeling ever since I moved here. I know I better get back to it being the usual way by the time I wake up tomorrow. I can't afford being down at a time like this. A time when it is only up to me to make things as close to perfect as they can come in this place, at this time... in this world maybe. All the novelty, all the possibilities, all the people... yeah. It's kind of funny (or not so funny) to realise that while my social life is flourishing like never before, there really isn't anyone I feel all that close to any more. I'm not sure what I'm writing about any more. I might feel like I'm an idiot for doing this tomorrow, tonight I don't care. Maybe I just don't care about anything for a change.

3 comments:

Turgonian said...

So what are student parties like in Tartu? When we have parties here, the music is generally too loud to have a decent conversation. And I don't like shouting at people. So...I don't really like parties either. Tonight was a party evening (every Tuesday), and I stayed home, read something, wrote two blogposts. You are less socially illiterate than I am, if that's any comfort.

When you are feeling detached (and I frequently have been feeling that way since I came to Middelburg), you can either be brusquely objective and do the things for which you went anywhere, or (if possible) you could just go away (with or without excuse, depending on the situation). But it helps that Middelburg is a small community with only a few hundred students, living within short distances of each other. How is Tartu? Am I right that there are about 20,000 students? But you probably interact mainly with housemates and other Psychology students.

I wouldn't worry too much about one party. There will be other possibilities. As T.S. Eliot wrote in The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,

There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me.
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.


I have no idea how applicable this is, and I don't even know entirely what it means, but I like T.S. Eliot, and your post reminded me of this. ;)

Relationships generally take time, so it would be logical that you don't feel that close to anybody yet. Try to find one good friend in particular. Aristotle said untranslatably that he who has many friends has no friend at all.

Goodnight, Andeora! Sleep well! Maybe you were just tired at the party. It's a marvel how much sleep can do to make you feel more positive...

...as Turgonian wrote at almost 3am local time.

Well, to quote a wise young lady once again, 'I might feel like I'm an idiot for doing this tomorrow, tonight I don't care.'

Sweet dreams. ;)

Anonymous said...

It is because you haven't eaten much, so Eat!

Taliesin said...

Somewhy this reminds me a short story by Neil Gaiman "How to Talk to Girls at Parties", where two 15 year old boys go to a party and well, accidentally go to a wrong party, but that's okay, since a party is a party , right? One of the guys is all charismatic but the another is a bit shy and so on and when he tries to talk to girls he just thinks that the girls are talking nonsense or being metaphorical or just foreign, although the girls are quite open about the fact that in this house all the girls are, in fact, actually from another star system.

Well, yeah, i haven't got a clue why I made this comment other than stream-of-consciousness logic.