The Object of One's Ambivalence

I am a poor secret keeper to myself. I don't know if it is narcissism, a technique to draw other people out by confiding in them myself, or some combination of the two- but if something is weighing on my mind, no matter how I want to keep it to myself, I inevitably tell someone. And having opened up to one person, it becomes easier to open up to another, and then another...

Imbibing in alcohol, of course, makes it worse. And so last night, All Hallow's Eve, I spilled the beans to the woman who was buying my drinks. This woman happened to be my best girlfriend on the island- who I was not going to confide in, for the sake of keeping certain news out of island circulation. Anyone (i.e. my two readers) who read my recent posts will be aware that I have been lightly bitch-slapped by infatuation. Infatuation is an embarrassing state of mind for the self-possessed woman. I've worked hard for what poise I can lay claim to, and the threat of face-flushing vulnerability does not sit well with me.

Sometimes when you confide in someone you do it to learn what they know. I believe this is a tactic used from kindergarten on up, though usually people get a little more subtle about it as they get older and using an intermediary begins to seem socially retarded. I live on a tiny island. I am beginning to embrace my inner social retard. In the last 24 hours, that developmentally stunted piece of me learned important pieces of intelligence: the jig is up, and though he has not to this point been certain, he has his suspicions that I may be attracted to him. And while he might be flattered, for a multitude of reasons, he might not reciprocate when it comes down to brass tacks.

So now we come to the repression portion of our program. As of tomorrow we will even have an extra hour of dark in the evening, during which to savor the sublime Chekhovian irony of all this misplaced energy.