a roll call for the social and anxious

Here's an anecdote for you:

I went to Sephora the other day to pick up a gift for a friend. It was her birthday and I hadn't seen her in a while, so I wanted to take some time to buy her something nice.

I arrived, I strode confidently in, and then a tremendously blonde lady came up to me with a big Can-I-Help-You smile. She said her catchphrase.

At the time, yeah. I actually did need her help. I actually did need to say, "Yeah, hi, I'm here to get a present for a friend. I don't really know what she'll like, but I know she likes to paint her nails, and she's also getting interested in eyeshadow. Do you have anything to recommend?"

It's so easy in writing, isn't it?

Instead, I just looked at her and stammered something along the lines of, "Oh, no, I'm okay, thanks," and then walked back out. I stood in front of Sephora for a while, because the lady was still there, and I couldn't very well just walk back in after I'd told her I was okay. I sat on a bench and stared at the entrance. I'm pretty sure there were at least two shoppers who walked past me and then looked back with a concerned expression.

Eventually (like two hours later), the lady was gone. She'd gone off her shift, she was in another part of the store, whatever. I'd been toasting in the hot sun, and with a bit of relief, I went inside.

No one assaulted me this time, so I weaved my way through the aisles. The good thing about being a teenage girl in Sephora browsing through the sections is that everyone thinks you're there to window shop. Everyone knows you can't afford any of the things in there, and that you're just looking through with curiosity. Sampling, spraying, swatching - you know the drill.

So no one talked to me, and I very comfortably went to the nail section, found two great colors, and went to stand in line at the cash register.

Three, two, one person left before my turn.

And then I left the line.

I left the line, much to the intrigued delight of the shopper behind me, and then I took the polishes and hid them in an obscure section of the perfume aisle. I made sure no one could see them behind Burberry's brown bottles, and then I left the store.

When I got back to the car, I asked my mom to go buy the polishes. She stared at me in outrage. "What have you been doing all this time?"

"I left my wallet in my room. Sorry. I'm really sorry. Can you please go get it? I hid them behind the Burberry perfume bottles at the perfume aisle."

I got a stern lecture about irresponsibility and how it was affecting people around me, and not just myself.

Haha. If only she knew, right?

I know this anecdote just sounds like a pretty horrible incident of a fail, of those giggly awkward moments that you tell to a friend later on in the month, but stuff like this has been happening pretty frequently.

Not being able to go get a cup of tea at a bookstore cafe because I don't want to do that fumbly thing with my wallet, walking out of a store because the cashier looks horribly irritated, thinking constantly about whether or not people are looking at the worst parts of my facial acne while talking to me...thinking, thinking, and eventually, freaking out.

With the latest trends in pop culture tending towards popularizing the geeky teen, the one who's uncomfortably awkward and says weird things at the wrong time, with the latest catch phrase being "awkward," it's easy to sort of assimilate these tendencies into the behavior of everyone else.

Let me tell you something. Being socially anxious really sucks. You literally cannot function around normal people. Your brain sort of haywires and eventually, you start thinking your responses in your head. Everything you're supposed to say, you think, and then you negate it because it's too mean, it's too dumb, it's too stupid to even mention aloud.

So you don't. And then you lose your voice. And then you become invisible.

If you believe you're socially anxious, because of your appearance or your behavior or your attitude, here's the voice in your head:

NO ONE CARES. AND EVERYONE FEELS JUST AS STUPID AS YOU DO.

It's an annoying voice that barrages you about the irrationality about your behavior. It sucks, but you know, sometimes, the voice is worth listening to.

I mean, do you feel conscious being nude at a nudist colony? Yeah, probably. But you have to realize that hey, you have a really cool new superpower. You are literally almost invisible. So everyone else is feeling too self-conscious about their own bodies to care whether or not you're fat or skinny or pretty or what not. You're just the same as them - nude.

I also feel like empathy sometimes helps. Put yourself in their position, or better yet, think about when you have ever been in their position. If you see a jogger running past your car, what do you think?

"Ew, why are they running in daylight?"

No.

"..."

That's probably more accurate. You think nothing. It's just a jogger. You have better things to worry about.

You are just as forgettable. And that is a good thing, because that means there is no reason for you to feel like every eye is on you. I know it sucks to feel the way you do when you walk into a classroom late and every student turns around to look at you. I know. (Read the anecdote above.)

There's not really much of a moral for this post. I just wanted to let you know...yeah. It sucks to be socially anxious. It feels irrational and crippling...but it is a problem we have to work at. We have to see that this isn't the end-all. I like to think of it like the plunge off of a rollercoaster...gritting your teeth and just letting yourself burst out into a conversation, a raised hand in class, a confident smile at the cashier.

And remember, no one cares.

an outfit: feeling blue

Here's the thing about summer: I usually end up staying at home the entire day. I'm not a loner or a recluse...but I do somehow end up losing touch with a lot of friends, simply because we've all become pretty busy with work and school. So basically, I don't have a reason to go out.

After spending six consecutive days in either pajamas or leggings and a t-shirt, I felt an itch to just put together an outfit for the sake of it. This was the (very simple) result.

1.) Printed blue box dress, DIY. My mom's been working her way through a pile of fabrics this summer, and she made this for me to keep cool under the raging California sun. It's a pretty loose, boxy shape of a dress, but for whatever reason, that's the shape I've been preferring these days. The color is a gorgeous cobalt blue, which, if you didn't know, is my favorite color. I have to say that the print is a little old-fashioned, but I have a fondness for it. Almost like I'm nostalgic for whatever past belongs to this print. But that's just me getting poetic.

2.) Pearl statement necklace ($8), XXI. This is a necklace I bought on a whim and dug up recently, after it had been buried under piles of jewelry in my accessory box. It's super big and definitely not the kind of thing I'd usually wear. What I did appreciate about this necklace was the fact that it was just a bunch of pearls shaped into an almost collar-like appearance, which is a pretty simple way of creating a statement necklace when it's Forever 21. Simplicity is the name of the game, and the white of the (fake) pearls and the blue of the dress match beautifully. Given the shape and old-fashioned print of the dress, I'd like to say this statement necklace is like the upgraded version of the "string" of pearls that housewives of the 50's wore so iconically.

3.) Sand oxfords ($4), thrifted. To keep the outfit from getting too precious, I switched out sandals or pumps for a pair of oxfords. They keep the old-school feeling in check while also adding a sense of masculinity to an otherwise super feminine piece. To be honest, these are a pair of shoes that haven't seen much sunlight either; I wore them once to school, and then forgot about them in a box under my bed. I do think I'll wear them more often; most of my other oxfords have gotten too worn out to wear on a long-term basis anyways.

Like me of summer, these three pieces have rarely seen the sun. I didn't choose these pieces with that specific thought in mind, and yet, when I pieced it together, that was what happened. Accidental poetry is a wonderful thing, if only because it makes you look cool. Or not. Yeah.

But it is interesting that this outfit turned out the way it did. To be honest, I didn't really choose the pieces with a lot of analysis; I just thought they looked good together. It was only after that I realized how a lot of it did actually fit together thematically...which goes to show, there's a lot of things in this world that's easy to BS. And fashion is one of them.

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Did you like this outfit? What would you wear if you haven't been out in a while? Tell me in the comments below!

july favorites

Ah, yes, a favorites list. I strive for originality and creativity in most aspects, but sometimes, I like things that are a little rehashed.

To be fair, I've been a consumer of blogs (and vlogs) for a lot longer than being a blogger, so I know what kind of posts I enjoy. And I really like favorites lists, because it feels like a genuine recommendations list from a genuine person. For whatever reason.

Anyways, July, being birthday month, means I had a lot of new stuff to try out. My gift-givers are infinitely more skilled at picking things for me than I am. Does that say something? I'm sure it does.

seventeen

So, I turned 17 last Thursday.

Here's the deal with this birthday: it didn't begin as a good one. For some reason, I was prepared to face it with the utmost of my negative energy. I wasn't having a party, I turned off Facebook notifications so that the majority of my friends wouldn't remember, I didn't remind my family members, and I was fully ready to spend the day doing ACT prep and procrastinating.

Obviously, I wasn't very happy. Which must frustrate you, as it frustrates me. Because here's the utter contradictory nature of my attitude towards my 17th birthday - I wanted no one to acknowledge it so that I could fully justify all of my self-pity, all of my self-projections of, "Oh, no one's going to remember or even care," but I also desperately wanted someone who would.

I don't know why I'm like this. I guess it's enough to say that sometimes, I'm a mess.

My negative attitude towards birthdays aren't simply geared towards self-pity though. Birthdays are too demonstrative of the passage of time. They show me, clearer than ever, that I am losing all of the precious time through my fingers and I am not getting a second of it back.

I'm 17. I'm older now. I'm almost at an age where I won't be considered a teenager or a kid anymore. I think about my age and I have to remember, I'm no longer a little kid. I won't be able to use my immaturity as a crutch anymore.

If anything, I think I suffer from the Peter Pan syndrome. Because growing up means responsibilities, and if there is anything I wish for myself in the future, it's a lifetime of carefree freedom. And how much of a little kid wish is that?

I just feel a lot of crushing weight, I guess. I'm getting older but I don't feel like I'm getting any smarter. If anything, I might just be getting a little bit more self-centered and selfish. I'm full of impending panic that I need to be wiser and of a better temperament, but everything I say (or don't say) and do are just...so full of my naivete. Truly, I have no experience with the world.

I don't think I deserve to be 17.

I watched a film once, called An Education. It starred Carey Mulligan with Nick Hornby's screenplay. I liked it; it was an interesting, thought provoking film.

In that film, Jenny, the protagonist, goes through her own coming-of-age story. At the end of it all, she faces her teacher with her consequences and says this:

"I feel old, but not very wise."

Maybe that's it. I do feel older. I feel more weary, which is ridiculous because I'm 17. But I also feel sick of the world, or at least the world around me, and I feel tired, much more often.

But at the same time, no, I don't feel very wise.

Ah, well. I guess that's what they call aging. And it is a sign of age, I guess, that I do actually feel this process of getting older and the consequences of the passing of another year.

I just don't feel ready to deal with it yet.

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How do you feel about birthdays? Do you still feel the crushing responsibility of age? Let me know below.