embracing my inner dork

we never really leave high school, do we?

it's kind of funny what led me to this post. i joked about it the other day, when i said that there are blogs i visit that i never comment on, because i feel all awkward. like it's high school. when all anyone really wanted was to fit in. but it didn't stop there.

the thing is, it keeps following me around, in a variation of themes.

it was here, on Sarcomical. and then i ran into it again, over here on PeterDeWolf.com. and now it was the central theme of Grey's tonight.

how we never really get past it. we grow up. we're supposed to put all that insecurity behind us, acquire confidence with each passing year. but the more i read, watch, observe... i don't believe we entirely leave behind those four years when we collect our diploma & head out to be adults. we might get a little better at hiding it. we might even successfully shake it off some of the time. but it lurks there. just a little bit. i'm convinced of it. if we *really* shed our insecure adolescent selves, it wouldn't surface all over the place. we wouldn't all still show it.

what i think is the most interesting part is seeing that the people who make me feel all inadequate & foolish, like i'm just pretending i can hang with the cool kids, they feel just as ridiculous as i do. the one thing i don't think occurs to us when we're in high school is that everyone feels that way sometimes. we spend four years feeling like the only dork in the world when everyone else seems to fit in without trying. and that inner dork resurfaces even when we're supposed to have left it behind. because really. does it get much more "high school insecure" than to feel shy leaving a comment (that is still pretty anonymous even when you use your "name") on a stranger's corner of the internet?

so like i said, we never really completely leave high school. we all want to be liked by someone who makes us feel a little like we never finished being fifteen. but the coolest part is that when we grow up, we realize that we're all on the same page. makes it just a little easier to "suck up my inner dork" and just say hi. after all, i look at all the really cool people i've met, people i wouldn't have thought would think i was kinda cool too, and realize i have more confidence than i give myself credit for. and that maybe being real, acknowledging our dorkiness, just makes us a little bit more approachable.