My Inferiority Complexes

I have an inferiority complex. In fact, I have several. I have an entire colony of inferiority complexes, going about their business, copulating and forming knitting circles inside my head. I have an academic inferiority complex: I no longer have the capacity, it seems, to read so-called "enriching" books and stick with them, every time I get a good grade something tells me that it was a fluke and I won't be able to repeat the performance, I feel anxious about my future (jobs, experience, qualifications) and yet I am only seventeen. I'm a senior in college, but more importantly, I'm seventeen. This is supposed to be a time for fun, not for Embarking Upon the Rest of Your Life unless you know exactly what you're going to do with it.

I also have a social inferiority complex. This one's more complicated. But something inside me prevents me from opening up fully with people who I don't trust. Yet how can you ever learn to trust people when you don't give them a first chance? I'm worried that EEP was a bad choice for me socially, that I might have been better in high school, where there are lots of options, at least, for friends, and then starting college in a structured, freshman sense, living in the dorms with ready opportunities for friendship. I don't have the kind of social initiative that going to school in Seattle but living in Tacoma, and at the same time being only 17, really demands. Yet when I'm thrust into close contact with people and almost forced to make friends, I usually do quite well - because I can listen, maybe. In orchestra, for instance, I thought the dynamic was better than EEP which is quite ironic if you think about it. But I look around at the EEP Lounge and see people full of bombast and in love with their own sense of being cool and "on the edge." They're loud and unrelenting and when you talk to them you think that somewhere inside of them they're laughing to themselves about how boring and young you are. They're always laughing and forming plots and gossiping and I wish that I had the...what? Intrigue? Ready supply of personal anecdotes and salacious information? to participate, because I tell myself I like people with a sense of humor and I'm not one to be a stony-faced spoilsport, but I can't, just can't, because I am an introvert, and I do prefer quieter friendships. It's not that I can't be crazy and loud when the occasion demands it - and I like gossip as much as the next teenage girl - but when it's unrelenting and always seems to exclude me, and it's practiced by the people who are, basically, my primary social circle of friends but most of whom don't care about me at all, it's nothing but frustrating. Because these are the people I'm around, but if I was gone they wouldn't notice. And I need a better social circle than that.

I suppose I was struck when Asian Chris came into the lounge yesterday, actually remembered me, treated me like someone worthy to talk to and was pleasant and self-deprecating and all around sweet, because you see very little of that in EEP guys, generally. Generally, in fact, they're too impressed with their own self-importance to take real care in social interaction. So as I watched Asian Chris listen to White Max's lengthy anecdote about a backpack, a mountain and a rogue car, without interruption or boasting, I thought to myself: "Must get to know more people like this. Because listening without sensationalising is something I value in a friend."

So I find myself lonely and unfulfilled, if you can use that word in a very mild, teenage sense, rather than an alone-in-the-world tortured-artist sense, wanting urgently to move on, to be in a position to fully enjoy this period of my life without having to compromise myself to fit in with a social culture which is frankly a little scary, sometimes. Not all the time, and I actually think many of the people I was referring to earlier are genuinely friendly and good people, but for me, maybe not right. Also, it's not like I don't have good friends in EEP - namely, Liz and Greg - but that's about it. And as friends, they're about as funny and as sweet as you can get, especially Liz, but it's not enough, two people, is it? Even Sinclaire, in TS we were like twin peas in a pod, as the expression goes, but now she's becoming harder and harder to talk to, really. I never know where I am with her - whether she's interested in what I'm saying or just dying for a pee - and when Liz is there as well, she's fun, but by herself she's a little hard to take, because she doesn't seem to give anything to the friendship, just asks general, aloof conversational questions and then gives me no help when I attempt to answer them. But then I'm being harsh because it's probably me, too, I've helped lead to this decline in our relationship.

So steps need to be taken to take the edge off my social inferiority complex, to stop it from establishing huge metropolises in my inferiority colony, and I'm thinking that drastic action might be necessary: moving into the dorms next quarter. I'm wary of raising this topic with my mother, for fear of starting a shouting match.

With my family I have no inferiority complexes, although there are a host of other psychological issues involved in our interaction which I have no interest in discussing here. God. Parents!

I have an appearance inferiority complex, but really, it's no different than most other teenage girls, excluding the ones who are rather self-satisfied with their own appearances. Oh, don't we all hate the pretty girls. It's not really as prominent as the academic or social complexes (at least I don't have acne anymore), but it's there, in the back of my mind, and I'm generally able to not pay it too much mind, because really, you can be a contented person without being a beauty. And sometimes - if the lighting's right and the makeup's carefully applied - which is VERY rare - I'm not that bad. I could, at any rate, be a lot worse. Liz mentioned a Turkish bear-woman a few weeks ago.

I'm not religious, so I don't have a spiritual inferiority complex. But sometimes I think of the possibility that God DOES exist in the way that I believed perfectly in Jewish-Sunday School, and I think, "Damn!" But to be fair to my secular self, those occasions are quite rare and hardly able to be described as a true complex.

I have a musical inferiority complex, but that's just because I don't practice enough and have no plans to make a career of violinning. The Carnegie Hall experience pretty much made it all worthwhile, though. Proof of the complex is evident in nightmares about performing, and being reduced to tears before an informal recital that I ended up pulling out of - this from a person who hardly ever cries, although I cried quite a lot when I was younger.

I don't have a theatrical inferiority complex because I directed A Midsummer Night's Dream. I think it will be good for Greg to be director this year.

I have a creativity inferiority complex. When I read something truly original, whether it's comedy or tragedy or poetry, it always seems so startlingly... obvious is the wrong word, but so simple to come up with, I think how come I couldn't have put that on paper first. Because I've always been The Writer, when I was younger I was always, always the Reader and Writer, but I just don't have any ideas, so when I find that a good one's been taken up, I think, "Oh, shit. One less floating out there." I wish ideas were like wildflowers in an untouched field, but actually, you have to really work to create, don't you? Maybe I can find a niche for myself where I can come up with things naturally, freely, and that's what I'm hoping for.

Romantically, I don't even know if I can claim a complex, because I haven't had any experience, and there's something about the idea of connecting so completely and intimately with one other person, and a male person no less, that seems scary to me, and I'm just not sure how a relationship could start out at the moment, especially since I've sworn off all EEP guys forever.

So, in summary. I would like to be intellectually...er... curious. And I would like to be able to talk about the things I read and learn about in an interesting, intelligent way. And I would like to have friends to whom I can discuss important things without pretention - just because they're interesting. But not things like etymology, and where the Phoenicians came from, and military strategy. They just aren't interesting.

I would like to be, socially, like my parents' friend Mary Ellen: a good listener, able to make conversation and make the other person feel respected, which is what she's so amazingly good at. To just look at you, start talking and make you feel like what you say, no matter how pathetic it is, is funny, fascinating and worthy of comment. (Well, she does that if she likes you, anyway. And she likes me). That would be a good skill to have.

I would like to have made my peace with God, who probably doesn't exist but possibly does (oh - sorry God!) and to be able to perform musically without having a nervous breakdown. I'd like to write something original. And, on the beauty front, I need to learn how to maintain my eyebrows (they're already growing back) without being at the mercy of Liz, my Personal Eyebrow Maintainer. And on the romantic front... oh, God... (sorry God).