It's been a long day of programming for me. The project, due Tuesday, is half-done. My brain is utterly fried right now, so I'm quitting for the night.
I hate to think that I have a one-dimensional personality. It really hurts when people say that, or when I suspect that they think that about me. When I was in sixth grade, my at-the-time seven-year-old sister used to call me "the Reading Robot." And I could see why she might think that about me- I was such a dork that I would pretend to be more interested in reading than anything else. Once I went to Peter Piper Pizza and I brought a political science textbook along. I subscribed to Time magazine to read at school after I finished my homework, and I would get upset if it didn't arrive in the mail on Tuesday afternoon. Yes, these were the lonely years, the years of my life I would like to do over again, or better yet forget about completely.
I'd love to say that I'm a completely different person now, that I've shed the cocoon of my past and turned into a beautiful butterfly, but I'm still not there yet. No, I really wasn't more interested in reading than anything else. I was this lonely, anxious, spoiled kid who never learned to make friends. I looked to my parents for approval, for them to say there's nothing wrong with you, it's the rest of the world that has the problem.
My entire life, I've been stereotyped by my family as "the nerd." The shy one. The quiet type. And I tried to live up to it. But now that all the stereotypes have fallen away, what's left?