Birthday blues

It was my birthday a few weeks back. I'm now 24. I didn't have a party and instead had a nice dinner with my parents, my brother and 2 friends from up North. It was nice, but I was kinda hoping for a party to compliment it. In early March I made a Facebook event for a party which would be held on a Saturday sometime in April. Sadly however, the invites never got sent out to anyone since apparently April was a too demanding month for my roomies...

The big two four isn't concerning me as much as I thought it would. Maybe it's because I know for a fact that Tom feels insecure about his age - he's 27 and hence the oldest in the house. I managed to settle his fears earlier today by claiming Andy (the couch bum aged 31) is officially the oldest resident in the house.

I vaguely remember getting drunk with Hibbert and Susan a few days ago and telling them that 'I wanted to get punched in the face'. At the time, I was trying to communicate that I wanted to feel some youthful exuberance before I got older. But for all the right reasons, they thought I was seeking some masochistic pleasure. After a painful 20 minutes of discussion I finally managed to get them see what I meant. For the record, I don't actually want to be punched in the face, I just want to ward off the seductive call of the corporate world for as long as I can.

My anxiety about getting older isn't what has been worrying me too much as of late. What's been occupying my mind most of all is this feeling of inadequacy which I can't seem to shake. Apparently I've been carrying my insecurities about my intelligence for at least the last 17 years. I've been reading 3 independent psychological reviews that were conducted on me at varying ages in my past. The common trends in all of them are: 1) Poor comprehension 2) Poor memory 3) Poor concentration and 4) A low self esteem. I can only wonder how being put well outside the glamorous Da Vinci program in English and many other subjects affected these 4 things. On the bright side though, I managed to tell the psychologist "I bet you compliment everyone's drawings, not just mine" right after he complimented my drawing of a stick figure. Pretty badass for a 7 year old, right?

I suspect this anxiety has made me quite hypersensitive towards my roommates. Jasper and Lachie are both kind and interesting people when talking to me individually. However, they mutate into very different people when around other company. In a group of people Lachie will tend to take advantage of my passive behavior and be more sarcastic and rude towards me. It's nothing too cruel - after all, most of his calls are memorized one liners my brother gave to him when he was living here. Japser, however, talks about me behind my back and will typically resort to more physical forms of embarrassment. He mocks my clumsy and aloof nature with his village friends and sometimes pinches me discreetly as I walk past him because he knows I won't make a scene in front of other people. At first I dismissed this as simple immaturity and attention seeking, but as of a month ago, I started cracking the whip. Well, I guess it would be more of an elastic band than a whip. I've spoken to Lachie and Jasper both individually and together about this in the hope that they would be more rational than irrational. I was wrong. Although I've convinced Jasper to stop physically hurting me, they're persistent that I'm overacting and that it's all in good fun. They keep telling me that I should 'fight back'. Even if I did want to fight fire with fire, I don't have the wit, social skills or communication skills to do so. More over, I really don't want to! I shouldn't have to be an asshole to stop being treated like an asshole. Even if it is in good fun, they should respect a roommates desire not to get mocked. Right? My patience is running thin, and off the cuff jokes about my intelligence is starting to make my blood boil. I'm afraid that if I can't convince these two to stop treating me this way, I might explode in rage at a seemingly innocent joke about my intelligence.

In other news, Jasper was surprisingly well behaved when we went down to Jervis Bay to go camping with one other guy. It was a bit of a sausage fest (both literally and metaphorically - we had sausages every meal), but it was still really great to spend close to 8 hours a day on a beach soaking up the sun. I found the sound of waves crashing on the sand a relaxing break from the high frequency hum of the air conditioner in my office.

Where was I? Oh that's right, I was having a massive winge. Sorry, I'll talk about more interesting stuff like places I've been and different alcohols I've drunk in a later blog. For now, it's all about feelings n' shit.

These latest events have really made me seriously consider moving out. A few things are chaining me back to the Animal House though.
1) If I move out and move in with people with real ambition, then I can say goodbye to Uni parties forever.
2) I have pretty much no other 'friends'
3) I'll be one step closer to walking into the jaws of 'The Machine'. (Obviously 'The Machine' is run by 'The Man').
4) My dad thinks I should move out

Either way a short term solution is needed. I need a good middle ground between my socially stunted Engineering PhD colleagues and my roommates. I need to get more involved with the community. I'll also try and dig up some embarrassing stories about Jasper and Lachie. Because this time, it's personal.