but I don't like that feeling of having someone point out to you the way you've been unwittingly displaying some quality that you aren't recognizing. it's disconcerting, especially when you fancy yourself rather self-aware.

it's the kind of thing that reminds of the time late in high school when my college counselor pulled me aside and declared that he was sure that I was clinically depressed. (he recommended prozac straightaway, despite his lack of psychiatric credentials. I suspected he was on some kind of enroll-your-friends-and-you-fly-for-free plan.) I wasn't depressed; I was just unhappy, in that particular predictable way that isolated artsy kids tend to be unhappy. (a little self-destructive, adept at petty crime, bored with drugs already, aching for something that felt relevant and meaningful.) had that college counselor had his shit together, he would have connected all the evidence and declared that I had a.d.d. instead, which really was the case and wasn't diagnosed until much later. knowing that, instead of knowing that some dick of a counselor wanted me to take prozac, really could have been helpful. so helpful that I don't really like to think about it.

oh I hated everything then. everything but books and making collages and writing zines and sending letters to the friends I met at art camp and taking trips to cities and dreaming about leaving. growing up in an isolated place you hate, that you want to escape in favor of someplace full of people like you, only you don't know quite where this place is, could set, I think, a bad pattern for one's life. I wonder if this is why I still keep wanting to run away to some other city. I haven't outgrown the feeling of that good place being somewhere else.