Facing Up To Facts Or I Unload Upon The Internet

I'm finally coming to grips with the fact that there are some parts of my past and my personality that I really need to come to grips with.

One of them being my bizarre social anxiety--which strikes at the weirdest times. Like my book group last night. A nice group of women: all well educated, well off and kind. (Never mind that each meeting feels more and more like a Woody Allen film circa Hannah & Her Sisters or some such. In a good way, really.) But I find myself struck silent at the most inopportune moments. When discussing books for god's sake!? I was the little kid with her nose in a book 24/7: under the covers; in the bathtub; at recess. I'm more comfortable talking about books than I am about anything on this planet. Well, maybe my love for yoga that developed in my early 30s. But you get the gist.

Other things I need to come to grips with? My relationship with my mother, that's for sure. But then that's the memoir I'll write in my 50s. She sometimes stumbles across this blog and I wouldn't want to create too much of a drama for myself. I've made a studious effort the past three years to sidestep any of those old Sicilian melodramas.

Also: my unending insecurity. That I'm not smart enough; cool enough; pretty enough; rich enough; neat enough; quirky enough; enough enough enough. Its fucking exhausting.

People who know me and Rod in real time get the impression that he's the super talkative one and I'm the quiet subdued one. In some senses this is true. Opposites attract and all that. But what people don't understand--because really, how could they?--is that my inside voice out-talks Rod any day of the week. How calming it was to meet someone whose outer self mirrored so closely my inner one. Somebody else's mind who did the same somersaults over and over.

I do what I can to get the inner chatterbox to chill out: sometimes yoga does it; most of the time reading does it; but there are times when she just babbles to herself about the most inane and hurtful things. Again: its exhausting.

The best solution I've come up with to deal with all of these issues is:

1) force myself into social situations that make me uncomfortable in the hopes that eventually I'll just get desensitized and get over it;

2) work hard and constantly learn new things to assuage those feelings of unworthiness;

and 3) work hard and constantly learn new things so that inner self has other things to talk about than her own self and shortcomings.

Well, that and I'm going back to al-anon. (Again: another story to be told in my golden years.)