Monday, December 3, 2012

Being 22

Recently I've realized something about myself…

I try everyday to make people happy. 

Yesterday I stopped at a coffee shop to get a chocolate chip cookie and a cappuccino.  I also decided, halfway through, that I wanted a pound of ground french roast for home.  For some reason, I ordered all three things separately.  The teenage boy who was helping me looked to be about 18, and I realized he was getting annoyed, put off by my fickle coffee needs.  He was frowning slightly, looking off to the side, distant and irritated.  And I started to feel this bubbling trickle of emotion inside me.  Crap, I thought, hurry Joy, make him happyMake him smile.  Eventually, I got a half grin out of him.  But I left feeling desperately hopeless.  I turned to my friend and said, I just wanted to make him happy.

I see this trait in my father, I see it in his mother.  But I never realized I also carry the gene.  I don't think there's anything terribly wrong with it.  It's just sort of amazed me, that at twenty two, I'm discovering things like this, things I haven't really noticed before. 

During my sophomore year of college, I had a similar realization, except about about anxiety.  I was standing in my dorm's kitchen heating up some tomato sauce, talking to my friend about the recent tightening in my chest I was experiencing whenever I went to a specific class, and how it completely freaked me out.  Sounds like anxiety, she said.  Up until that point, I always thought of anxiety as an emotion that's severe and isolated.  I didn't realize it can be mild, that it can come in almost any form, and that it doesn't always require medication.  I was amazed.  I'm not a particularly anxious person though, I said defensively.  That doesn't mean you don't occasionally suffer from anxiety, she said, shrugging.  

Have you discovered something about yourself recently that completely floored you?  Do tell....     

(photo by Max Wanger)   

No comments:

Post a Comment