I'm tired. It's muggy in here, and as nice as the breeze is outside, it only gets about halfway into my room until it stops. My left leg is comfortable, and my right leg is all blotchy and red. I know I have an A/C unit in my room, but I hate running it at night. We only have a single unit in the entire apartment, and for some reason, they decided one of the bedrooms was the best place to put it.
I feel really guilty when I run the A/C at night, because I can't go to bed with the door open, and I hate that I will be resting in cool, albeit loud, comfort, while my roommate has to suffer with a fan. When she told me it was in my room, I tried to get her to switch to my room before I moved in, but obviously failed. We had it running last night because Alex stayed over, and he was all greasy and sweaty, and I felt bad for him, too. I wouldn't mind leaving my window open and buying a small fan to stick in front of it, but closing the window is the only way to harbor any hope of not being scared shitless by the trains.
The train tracks through Brookings are immediately outside of our windows.
I love this apartment much more than I liked living in the dorms, and much more than Alex and Scott's apartment last year. It's roomy, generally clean though it's an older building, and affordable. The only things I can think of to complain about would be the aforementioned less-than-convenient air conditioner placement, and the trains.
I did Angela's dishes last night. It was like 12:30 in the morning, and I was washing my plastic containers after having leftovers. I felt really awkward leaving all my dirty dishes in the sink, and even more awkward about only cleaning my things, and leaving her pizza pan and cutter. So, I took about two minutes and washed all of the dishes in the sink. I then curled up next to Alex, and immediately started to worry. Would she think that I'm leaving a hint, or that I micromanage? Will she be upset because I washed her dishes? Why am I so uptight about two damn dirty dishes? Would she feel bad? It was not my intent to feel bad. Should I talk to her about it?
All I do at work, all day long, is stock shelves, move merchandise, zone, and help customers. I repeat the phrase "Can I help you find something?" more times than I can recall. I put on a fake smile, use a voice way higher than my normal one, and make a fool out of myself trying to make the customers happy. I guess I'm like that in more than just work.
I'm really shy. No, for real. I mask my shy tendencies and awkward insecurity by being boisterous and friendly. When it comes to work, it's very easy for me to pull out my acting experiences and play along to the audience, but in more personal situations, it's very difficult for me to come out of my shell, and stop worrying so much.
I'm such a people-pleaser. I will go out of my way to make sure another person is happy and content. When Lizzie and I were moving into our dorm room last year, we decided to bunk our beds. Since Alex and I got there first, we moved the furniture before Lizzie got there. I chose to bunk the beds as high as they could go, one right under the other, so we could fit a dresser under the bottom one. I didn't want Lizzie to be cramped, so I chose the top bunk...with less than a foot of space between me and the ceiling. I took up very little room in the dorm, and justified all of it with "I'm never here. I'm always at Alex's house." I wanted to make sure that Lizzie would have no reason to be upset with me about how much room I was taking up.
I was miserable the entire semester, and I blamed it on her. I should have blamed myself.
I'm doing the same thing now, in this new apartment. I know Angela much less than I know Lizzie, and so I'm doubly anxious and awkward. I feel terrible about not getting any furniture for the rooms we share, and using her pasta strainer for my spaghetti makes me sweat. I feel awful about using her hand soap in the bathroom, and I make a mental note every time I pee to make sure I am the next person to stock the toilet paper. She has pictures hanging in the living room, which I love...but I am very apprehensive about putting up some pictures of my own.
We have opposite work schedules. She works mornings, while I normally close in the afternoons. We barely see each other, if at all, and probably won't much of the summer. I also feel bad about this. "What if she thinks I hate her? What if I'm being a hermit?"
The worst thing about my people-pleasing tendencies is that I end up repressing my discomfort until it gets projected onto the person I am trying to please. I get so wound up about the tiniest little things, that if they don't reciprocate, I begin to blame them for my unhappiness.
I have noticed that I only do this with women. When I'm at Alex's house, I know his roommates pretty well, or at least well enough to be comfortable around them, and not really worry too much about what they think of me. I'm okay with using their dishes and pots, and I don't get all uptight when I choose to spend the night with Alex. I can sit in the living room with them and watch movies or talk or drink, and I don't feel like I'm annoying them in the slightest.
I'm just really, really bad at being a roommate. The only time I actually felt comfortable sharing a living space with someone else was with my first dorm roommate, who was chosen at random. Autumn and I had similar sleeping schedules and times we wanted to study or rest. We had the same schedule second semester, and would sleep through Wildlife 110 in the mornings together if one of us didn't want to wake up. I found it very easy to be Autumn's roommate, even if we weren't the best of friends.
Don't get me wrong, I really like my new roommate. She and I have a lot of similar interests, and we've known each other for over a year. She's a great person and friend. I am really excited to get to know her better, and I have no complaints about her as a roommate. I honestly think I have a great thing going here.
I'm just annoyed with myself.
Perhaps this will take time to adjust to. No matter how many times she says something is okay, or that she doesn't mind this or that, I will still worry. I'm not entirely sure when those worries will go away, if ever.
In other news...
I also had to go back in to the doctor this morning. I have an infection, which has been a recurring issue for me over the past few years. Since I was a sophomore in high school, I've had numerous infections affecting numerous areas of my anatomy, from my brain to my kidneys, including bacterial meningitis my junior year of high school, and nephritis last spring. Alex stayed with me last night to make sure I was okay and keep me company until I could fall asleep, but tonight I'm on my own. He's a light sleeper, and everything wakes him up.
I'm on an antibiotic series for a week.
I'm probably killing my immune system with all of the antibiotics I keep having to shove into my system. I start to wonder if I'm sick all of the time because of the PFO (patent foramen ovale: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0002102/) that was found when I had meningitis. It makes the most logical sense to me, and I was told to not play anymore wind instruments by the cardiologist I saw after my brain surgery.
I am now minoring in music on the trumpet...so that's how well I listened to that.
I wonder if I should look into getting it fixed. The surgery is low-risk and minimally invasive. Basically, they stick a catheter into the inner thigh and feed it up to the heart to close up the hole. There are studies being conducted (at least one I know of through Abbott-Northwestern) linking PFOs to chronic migraines, which is something I've battled my entire life. Now that I'm over eighteen, I could sign up to participate in a study. The surgery seems a bit unreasonable, since I haven't had any relapse with the meningitis, or a stroke. I just get really tired of popping ibuprofen and getting sick every other month.
I just hate being so sensitive to illness. Headaches and getting a sore throat every few weeks don't seem to be huge, life-altering problems, but after a while, it's incredibly tiring and irritating.
I should probably hit my bed, before my crabby pants stay on for good. Hopefully I'll start to feel better in the next few days, and maybe even stop being so twitchy, and just stop worrying about the dirty (now clean) dishes.
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