A Curious Girl: Moody Self takes a course in learning to shut up

Thanks Alice and Hsiu for your nice guestbook messages!

I voted for the first time today! Wahoo! (I used my postal vote form as my ballot paper. How sad is that. And how pointless.)

I was accosted by one of the uni's most well known politicos (alongside another of the uni's most well known politicos, funnily enough) and given a list of nine names to vote for in the Parish Council. Met Dave Tory later who said he was going to vote for the other four on that basis. I didn't vote for them at all (actually I rather guiltily remembered that I'd left that ballot paper at home, but no matter since I wouldn't have known who any of them were), as I recognise one name.

Yesterday Matthew and I went over to one of the nicer food places on campus, and as I was walking around I saw another of the political types, who I don't really know but I heard him talk once and told him afterwards that he talked sense (!) and as I saw him through the window, our eyes met and he smiled and waved.

I was caught by surprise. As I don't really know him, and he's met me once, it was really nice to be considered worthy of attention. Yeah, that sounds sad, but I was pleased with the response - it was one of those little things that makes you feel good, you know? (Just in case anyone is wondering, I am most definitely not his type)

My evil mind, however, can play some wicked tricks on me. As I lay in bed last night I thought about it again, then all the doubts surfaced. He'd probably mistaken me for someone else (my tutor last term did this, after all...)... or maybe he was waving at Matthew, since everyone seems to know Matthew (once a random guy came along to my room hearing me play Delirious, introduced himself, saw Matthew and knew instantly who he was). Somehow, late at night anyway, this contrived to more than negate how pleased it had made me in the first place. I don't know how this happens. Maybe it was because earlier in the day I was very unwisely working a rather embarrassing incident that happened in my first week of uni into a story I was writing, but then realised that I couldn't write it just how it happened or it might as well be autobiographical, but if things went any better for the main character, I was liable to depress myself. After writing the incident with ridiculous satire, I mused on how tremendously awfully I seemed to have got on in the first term. Was it my fault that I and the majority of the people on my corridor never became good friends? Am I really unfriendly? Am I just a loser? Did I do something wrong? I suddenly and vividly recalled the Sunday when I went to do my washing for the first time, and saw two of the other girls there - was sure that I'd expressed an interest into going to the supermarket with them, and they certainly knew where I was, but when I returned to my corridor, no one was home and they came in with bags in hand whilst I was cooking lunch. I'd foolishly assumed that they were going to wait for me, or at least call me, but they didn't. I started to wonder if uni had proved that whilst I'd always thought that I could be a good friend and make interesting contributions to conversations, and make people laugh and all those things, I'd actually been horribly mistaken by some freak of nature, and I wasn't worth knowing at all.

Which is probably why, when I realised that I might not have been recognised by that guy, I couldn't help but suspect that my theory had been correct. It reminded me of a time, on election night when I'd already found out that I'd lost, when I saw someone I'd got to know, a man also standing for election for another post. He looked to be the favourite, and was probably going to win. I went to greet him and, when I said hello and leant on a chair by his table, the response I got (in stereo, from him and one of his friends) was, "Oh sorry, someone's sitting there."

I ignored the fairly obvious evidence that he'd assumed that I'd come to borrow the chair, and probably not even figured that I wanted to just say hello, and decided that this meant that as a losing candidate, I had become an instant nobody and the entire election process had been a total waste of time.

So last night, I turned the light on again, made myself some hot chocolate and prayed for a bit (yes, I know it's hard to believe that I actually did something mildly productive! :) ), and wrote a little sketch. A father keeps telling his daughter he loves her, but all she can do is listen to a little whisper saying, "You're nothing, no one cares about you." In the end, the father catches her attention, and she says, "Why didn't you say anything?"

I decided that it was high time that I tried to realise that even if no one did care about me (which is certainly untrue), I am worthwhile in my own right, because God made me as I am. I am worthwhile for the same reason that everyone else is worthwhile, and I don't need to be ashamed. And then I felt rather better :)

Random word for today: alacrity

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