Arm-looper

Some girls are natural arm-loopers.

You know what I mean, right? The kind that like to loop their arm around yours when you’re out walking somewhere. For them it’s a natural thing, to encircle your arm with theirs and hold on. I think it’s an expression of trust, of familiarity. Sometimes, if you encounter a chronic arm-looper, you may find that they do it to you even when you’re not that well acquainted.  But in essence, people don’t loop arms with someone they don’t like.

For some reason, I am not one of nature’s arm-loopers. In general, I don't think I am quite accustomed to physical acts of affection. Hugging someone more often than not feels contrived, don’t get me started on air-kissing, and the only usual form of physical contact I initiate is restricted to placing a hand around or on someone’s shoulders.

Lately however, I am slightly alarmed to find that I want to loop arms with someone. Actively, positively want to. How bizarre. Can you freak someone out by coming up behind them and then suddenly attacking them with a determined latch onto their arm?

Regardless, I am a very willing arm-loopee, and still feel bursts of gratefulness and warmth when someone does it to me. So come one, come all. Let's loop.

These things are fathomlessly out of our hands

I’m sure some movie or book must have introduced me to the concept that we are the sum of our actions. That what we do signifies who we are, regardless of our thoughts, our intentions, or our words.

When I get caught up in the contradicting versions of the person I think I am in my head with the person I think I’m portraying externally, I echo this sentiment and think of myself in terms of the things that I do. I am my habits, my routine; I look for the familiar in what I do.

I am the attempt at harmonizing along to songs playing on the radio in the car when I’m driving alone.

I am the heavy eyelids I have when I’m reading in bed at night and don’t want to stop.

I am the same repertoire of songs I play on the piano, because my level of competence is stuck at grade four.

I am the pleasure of folding flour into cupcake or muffin batter, or the kneading of dough to make cinnamon rolls.

I am the volume I mute or the eyes I keep covered when watching something scary on tv on in the cinema.

I am the stunning exhibition of awkwardness when interacting with acquaintances; I am the bits and pieces of conversations that make me groan when they revisit my thoughts.

I am the sweaty mess I become when I exercise, I sweat like a mofo.

I am the things I write, I am the pages of my journal scribbled with my often ugly handwriting.

I am the embarrassment of starting to sing at the wrong moment of a song, or singing the wrong lyrics, embarrassment I feel even when I’m alone and no one’s there to witness my gaffe.

I am my slight obsession with Nigella Lawson.

I am the fuzzy warm feeling I get when the cat comes to my room and curls up next to me on my bed to sleep.

I am the disappointment that I feel at times.

***

Side-track. Side-track. Side-track.

Today I was out all day on this work thing, and my phone bloody died on me. I returned home to charge it, and when it restarted there were a slew of emails. If there’s anything these past 4 months of working have taught me, it is this golden nugget: The higher the number of emails, the higher the chance you may have screwed something up. This time around, I thought I screwed up again. So I did what anyone of my disposition is apt to do in these circumstances, which is to say “Fuck”, very quietly, and grabbed my laptop to rectify things. And as I was doing this, with that now familiar subtle tone of panic and distress underlining my actions, there was a moment where I was freaked out by the idea that this may be the rest of my life – work, the fear of having done work wrong, the heavy sighs of realizing that I have messed up again, that I am accountable to my bosses. Then it turns out it wasn’t so much a screw up after all, false alarm, and I was relieved, and I decided to blog instead.