I am like an onion. I have many layers.

I posted a blog entry yesterday which I have since deleted. Here is the issue: I am too worried about what people think of me. I deleted the post because it exposed a very embarassing part of myself and I decided I didn't want that out there for everyone to see.

I have always cared too much about what people thought. Once I started becoming, well, me around the sixth grade, I got ridiculed for things that I liked. In the sixth grade my boyfriend had a poster of Mariah Carey in his locker. I had pictures of Lucille Ball. In the eighth grade I raved about this new Bette Midler CD that had just been released and talked a friend into taking it home and listening to it. She told me it was weird. So, in high school, I started keeping things a little more to myself. I listened to music and read in my room. Bette Midler's version of "I Sold My Soul To Rock 'n' Roll" was my "angry song" and I watched The Golden Girls religiously. But I didn't go out and share these things as much with other people. Granted, my Bette Midler obsession has always been out there, but I didn't talk about guys or the feelings of jealousy I had toward other, more confident girls in my age bracket. I didn't want people to single me out for anything else.

My freshman year of college was really stressful for me. At the time, I thought it was mostly because I was working so much, plus going to school full time, plus a couple of different guy issues I was having at the time, but now I realize that it was all just a release of the past five or six years of my life. I went through several spells where I would get crippling stomach cramps brought on by crippling neck pain that was caused by stress. I was really worried about my health. When I had a spell during a German study group in which my left arm and the left side of my face went numb, I got really nervous and saw a doctor. He told me what I knew all along, that it was stress, but I will never forget how awful I felt during that time frame.

Since then, I have tried to lighten up. I really feel that I am much more free than I was when I started college five years ago, but even now I have times when I get concerned about what others think. I worry that I have been too vulnerable or revealed too much of myself to someone, and sometimes it makes me nauseous. I am not totally honest in my answers to questions because I worry that my feelings will be rejected. Even when I do let loose and say what I'm actually thinking or feeling, my words are often met with negative reactions, like me offending someone or putting my foot in my mouth. Then I go back to clamming up and start the cycle all over again.

I wish that I could live every aspect of my life here, on a page, where everyone could see every ingrown hair, every gross mole, every rough patch of skin, and every yellow toenail. And along with that, I wish that the way people responded meant nothing to me at all. I wish I could worry more about the experience and the lesson than I do about the consequences. But it's just not me. Maybe it will be in ten years, or maybe it won't. Who knows? I am really trying though, and I know that I am getting better...just not as much better as I had hoped.