you think you know me well but anyone can tell

When it is raining, really pelting on 280, my car inevitably feels as though it will be swept off the road, tumbling off the ever present cliffs. Last night was no exception. It was coming down something fierce. Having grown up in EBF, I am not that concerned by less-than-ideal driving conditions. Driving in rain is nothing compared to doing a 180 in a station wagon at the bottom of your hill when you are sixteen and just got your license in time for the first sleet and snowstorm of the year. What stresses me out in inclement weather here is the other drivers.

This tendency reminds me that I have a suspicious mind. The other drivers can't be trusted; it's safe to expect the worst. Last weekend, my friend SP called me inscrutable, and it really irked me. I have been wondering why it crept under my skin, giving me hives like a violent allergic reaction.

maisnon mentioned some time back on her blog that she can't be anyone other than exactly who she is at any given moment. I will be the first to admit that I can't make such a claim. I have the Prufrock-ian habit of preparing a face to meet the faces that you meet. Who I am at work is someone different from who I am when I am taking classes. Who I am with some friends is different from who I am with other friends. Who I am alone is different from who I am around other people. It isn't something I do on purpose, but there are times and places for certain parts of me over others.

Many years back, when I embarked on dance lessons in Manhattan, my friends from graduate school would make relentless quips on the subject. "You're not going to get tossed in the air or anything, are you?" It was not mean-spirited really. It just did not compute in their heads. They had known me as a foul-mouthed tomboy, and the idea of that person now swing-dancing was understandably jarring.

Any time I have made a major move in my life, it has really tested how well friends get me. The friends who always knew there were other parts of me waiting to appear were supportive, were unphased. The friends who only knew me as the fragment to which they had become accustommed wrote me off as illogical, or making some kind of radical shift. I oscillate in my reaction to that. A part of me understands that it is my quirk, this shape-shifting behavior, and so it should not surprise me when friends are befuddled. But another part of me feels that it is a tad lazy, to only look at a person from the surface. One of my closest friends, W, has never been vaguely troubled by anything he has learned about me. Okay, except for the time I told him I was thinking about getting an arranged marriage at 22- but he was right to give me a tongue-lashing about that, considering I was clearly having a minor psychotic break at the time.

So, when a close friend tells me now that I'm inscrutable, more than anything, I feel disappointed, but resigned. It is more telling than cause for tragic ramblings. Which means that, once again, I am posting about nothing.

In other news, fear for me- bro-seph is cooking dinner tonight.