Black Halter: Aeropostale.
Checked Skirt (actually a dress): Thrifted.
Loafers: TJ Maxx.
Lipstick in MAC's Rebel.
Hi there.
I've been struggling to remain confident in my personality here in Italy the last few weeks. It's strange. Most have insecurities about their bodies, their face, their outward appearance. And although I used to have these insecurities, not so much anymore. One thing I've never been able to quite get over though is the insufficiency I feel in my personality.
I love to be alone. I find solace and rejuvenation in being by myself. I like to think, take things in and just be. I have to push myself to be with other people and to interact with them. It's not that I'm unfriendly or rude...I just prefer to be alone, it is my natural tendency to gravitate towards being by myself. It's hard because its always made me feel like an outcast, like a loser. I want to be like everyone else. I want to be able to make friends, have good conversation, and feel a sense of satisfaction when I connect with others. But I don't. I just feel this crippling anxiety of thinking about every next word I'm going to say, worrying if I've offended them, turned them off to me, bored them, or just plain annoyed them. I usually can't have a conversation without walking away and feeling insecure that I wasn't good enough for this person, and that I'm not even worth talking to.
I wish sometimes I were just different. That I didn't have this issue of socializing, connecting with people, and just being myself. It's always been a problem for me, haunting me in high school, when I came to Kent, and still now in Italy. It's a problem that never really goes away for me, but now it just feels amplified being here where I don't feel like I fit in sometimes with the classmates I'm here with. Not only that, but my preference to 'be alone' doesn't really work in a foreign country when you need others to get around, experience new things, and have a rewarding study abroad experience. I'm so terrified of wasting my time here. That my personality will just hold me back from so much... I already feel like it has in some ways, so every day I just get more and more frustrated. Maybe people like me aren't meant to study abroad? I don't know, that's what it feels like somehow. I love my experience I'm having here, but it's when society tells me that being alone isn't okay...then I feel so much less satisfied with who I am and what I'm here for.
I'm usually very dependent on my family to fill in the voids of my aloneness, but with them not here it's also been difficult.I feel as though they're the true people who understand me and accept this flawed, unaccepted personality I have...without them I feel kind of lost.
Just had to write some of these feelings out tonight. Don't mean to be such a downer. Don't mean to throw a pity party. And certainly don't mean to sound ungrateful. I've just been feeling all this burden on my shoulders building for the past few weeks since I've arrived and I feel like it's part of my experience here that I want to document. Not all days are perfect visits of Venice and scoops upon scoops of gelato...some days, it's hard to be here in ways I didn't expect. I'm getting through though, and I know it will all be okay. x
With much love, Lauren.
