I am that I am

Me

I am dreamy. I can spend hours and hours and hours just daydreaming. About everything.Complete Harlequin romance novels are visualized in my mind when I daydream about that initial gaze full of amazement from that dashing, charming and witty black prince at a party of my fabulous friends or that chance meeting with him in the Thalys to Paris. Dressed in a deep red silk dress perfectly designed and made by myself, short of the 15 pounds I gained this last year, and with my kinks perfectly shaped and coiled, knot- and shrinkage free, I would passionately talk to him about my favorite book Segou, disagree with him on the need for foreign aid, but agree with him on the fact that Kassav is the best band ever. I don’t only daydream about him. I also dream about sitting in front of the fireplace of my house alongside the canals of Amsterdam that I bought with the money I earned from the international bestseller that I wrote. Come one, I can’t be the only one spending a lot of time on real estate sites and then imagining the estates being mine and redecorating them in my mind!

The daydreams are the result of the fact that I am an introvert. No, that doesn’t mean that I’m shy. No that also doesn’t mean that I’m anti- social. It means that although I love the occasional debate and discussion in a (small) group setting, and although I love to go out to get my salsa dance groove on, I really prefer my own company. I find interacting with others to be draining. Why? Well because most interaction involves small talk, and I hate small talk. Yes, I can pretend to be really into your account on how good or bad traffic was getting from place X to Y, but all that pretending, the blurting of Ooh’s and Ah’s, and No!’s and Really?’s at appropriate moments just gets really tiring and draining. To avoid the small talk, I could of course change the subject myself and  talk about my all inner most private thoughts; but here’s the thing… I am a very private person.

Very, very private. I have this aversion, and it’s there, and I have accepted it as part of me, and I find that people will just have to accept this part of me. Period. And I can hear some of you that are reading this right now thinking: “But all this information is rather private, doesn’t she care that everybody will know all of this about her?”. Well, trust and believe, I have taken every precaution that I could take to keep my identity on this blog anonymous. Ana Elrich is not my real name. The email address and twitter account linked to this blog? Created especially for this account. The gravatar? Yes, that’s me in the picture, but I took precautions to make my face as unrecognizable as possible. If you would still be able to recognize me walking on the street, please tell me. I’ll take this current picture down and put up a picture featuring only one eye, or a toe nail. And no, nobody I know, knows about this blog. If I have to explain the aversion, I would say that revealing information about myself feels to me like I am giving others a head start on me. I know, that’s a very vague explanation, but that’s the best way I can explain it.

Maybe this aversion to share myself with others was always there, but I became aware of it the most when I started to get teased in school. Not only did I not have anybody to share myself with, but in my mind, having information about my likes, my thoughts, my dislikes would give the bullies more ammunition to fire at me. So I build this big wall around myself to protect myself, to keep myself safe.  I was smart though, and although that did earn me some respect, being smarter than my peers added to feeling awkward and out of place. And I looked awkward too. I was skinny, my hair was a fried brittle relaxed mess, and a whole lot of other stuff, but I guess you get the point. My teenage years were mostly spent at home with a book, or in front of the computer messaging on ICQ. It wasn’t until I was in my early twenties that I thought “You know what? Screw this, I’m not going to care about what people think of me anymore”. I signed up for salsa classes, starting going to salsa parties, just come out of my shell a little more. I did still feel a little bit awkward and out of place and I probably was a little bit awkward and quirky and different, but I didn’t care. I also started to gradually gain weight, and with the weight came the male attention.

I always knew that casual sex wasn’t for me. For me sex is a very intimate act. Somebody is literally entering your body with his body,  that’s intimate. I couldn’t do that with anybody. Yes, for a long time nobody wanted to have sex with me, but even if awkward, quirky, nerdy would have been “it”, I still wouldn’t have given in and had sex with just anybody. Besides the fact that it’s very intimate, I also need a negative STD test in order to proceed. Two in fact, the second test would have to be taken after a couple of months. Condoms just aren’t enough. I think it’s safe to say that I am a Miss Play-it- safe. I never drive fast, I don’t drink and drive, I always leave the house ridiculously early to avoid arriving late just to be safe. I play by the rules. I don’t do crazy stuff.

The craziest thing I ever did was move to another country, another continent for love. That relationship did not end well. In fact it ended dramatically, after I found out that he was still cheating on me (well what he did I categorize under cheating, and he was aware of that) after I had forgiven him the first time and he had went into therapy. Dramatically! That left a huge negative impact on my life not just emotionally but also in other aspects. I feel hopeless, I feel angry, I feel stupid, I feel sad…I am sad. 

I think I started this blog in the hopes that writing my feelings down and sending them out into the internet universe would somehow heal me and rid me of my feelings of despair. Will it work? Well, I don’t know. It felt like something I needed to do, so I did it. We’ll see how it works out.