Female

21

This box is a little tiny test of my identity. I feel a note of panic--I don't have it all figured out yet, and there are so many things that I want to be that I'm not yet. For example, I want to be a writer.

I love hugs. I try to make it my paradigm for interacting with people. It doesn't always work, but more often than you'd think, people hug back. There is something about the closeness of a hug, the fact that you have to spread your arms, exposing vulnerable parts, and trust the other person to be warm and safe. Sometimes I am left disappointed, it's true, with my arms stretched out, reaching for a connection that has failed. Does it sound naive of me, to put my trust in people like this? I hope that I'm not walking blindly, I know I could get hurt, but it seems to me that people deserve an opportunity to embrace, and each time someone offers, it gives someone else a chance to affirm that trust.
I take the same headlong embrace approach to reading, and books are some of my best friends. Being hugged by a book feels really good. Words are really important to me. So much so that I don't understand a whole category of jokes, the kind where people throw away words, saying what they don't mean--a self-deprecating humor that implies that no one will listen to them anyway. I react badly to these jokes, and I cannot laugh at them, let alone make them myself.