... I also speak five languages (... or more if you count differently, because I've studied five more than that with some intensity, and she's barely started on a few of hers that I listed), so that part is really moot. She's certainly no more academic prodigy than I am. At this point, we have been in school for the same amount of time.
The main point is that it is
so weird to see someone who has straight blond hair, blue-eyed, and enjoys every. single. bit. of housewifeness. And. Yeah... someone who will happily defer to others to open pickle jars or do mechanical stuff, rather than insisting on learning to do it herself. How strange. A mythical entity.
Gonna go find my Genghis Kahn or something :I
I dont totally undersand what you mean by ugly duckling pride. Is it frustraion that your own qualities and interests dont attract somebody that loves you and you love? What specific features of your friend makes this so hurtful? You listed them yeah, but why do they cause problems for your self image?
I don't even know what's up with me at this point.
I proudly, stubbornly hold onto the part of myself that absolutely loves sweeping around in black clothing or a nice waistcoat, and has a bizarre flair for the theatrical and gaudy. I have no logical reason to think that frizzy brown hair is inferior to straight blond, or that I'm any less lovable for being a girl who is relentlessly good at things. Even cleaning and sometimes cooking, though I can't say I enjoy them. For goodness' sake, I was raised by a father who would periodically say: "Vector, fight the fascists! Bring down the capitalist pigs!" So I'm trying. But it makes me weird. And I already kind of have a surfeit of weird going on in this little economic system.
And yes, I'm frustrated because the people who love me (outside of my family--can't forget them) seem to do so for my "purity," my intellect, or my "brokenness." I do recognize these traits in myself. It isn't that they don't exist.
Or no, I'm also frustrated because part of me is still so cautious and terrified of being hurt, or judgmental. I can feel that someone is wrong, really, honestly, so I don't pursue them. I am far too young for the people I prefer.
She likes cooking and cleaning and making babies. It's societally sanctioned as the "natural" thing for a woman to want to do.
I feel like a freak of nature. Doesn't help that people still ask me which country I'm from, despite my accent. Doesn't help that they still want a pedigree of ethnicities and can ask me about my sexuality flat out. Doesn't help that I've somehow become ageless, anywhere between 12 and 40 or more. I feel that I know who I am, very well, but to the rest of the world I am lost in a plane of infinite space and cannot be met as a human being so much as a myth or a scientific curiosity.
And I'm not going to stop what I'm doing. It would be easier to fall back and let the friable weight of centuries take their place, and to use the fabled glass ceiling as a looking glass. But I refuse, unequivocally; and furthermore, I refuse to apologize.
But I am really very lonely.