What the hell am I doing, drinking in Cambridge at 25?

[dolorosa_12]

I moved into Aarhus on Saturday. We celebrated my move, and gave former housemate D an appropriate send-off: a spontaneous drunken Youtube party.


There was much playing of Eurodance, along with other old favourites ('I Kissed A Girl', 'Party in the USA', 'Tequila Makes Your Clothes Fall Off', 'Butterfly', 'What's My Age Again?'), and most importantly, 'Drinking In LA'. You know:

It was a weird kind of night. I had an intense conversation with my friend (and now housemate) M about what songs epitomised our lives, but I was too drunk to think of what songs were my own personal mantras. Now, sober, I can say unequivocally that my theme songs used to be 'I Like Your Old Stuff Better Than Your New Stuff' (I don't know you I feel you are my friend/ I'm trying not to be pretend/ I like your old stuff better than your new stuff) and 'The Song Formerly Known As' (I don't go to parties baby/ Cos people tend to freak me out - a love song for nerdy introverts) by Regurgitator, and 'Daydreaming' (I quietly observe, standing in my space/ Daydreaming) by Massive Attack. I'm very good at assigning song lyrics to my life, and searching for meaning in song lyrics ('How mid-20s of you,' Alex would say).

Then, as I often do, I got into this extremely melodramatic conversation with my friend L along the lines of many drunken conversations I've had with him before. Essentially, I carry on about my problems (which are always the same problems), he's sympathetic, and eventually I cry. This time, he'd clearly decided to be more proactive.

'Your problem, Ronni, is that you're too nice. You do whatever people ask you, even if you don't want to,' he said.

This is true. To illustrate, he ordered me to do various things (snatch the drinking horn full of Barnstormer away from M and bring it to him, etc) in an angry tone of voice. I, of course, did all this without thinking, as well as freaking out that I'd done something wrong (due to his tone of voice).

'You see what I mean?' he asked.

He's right, of course, but I can't really see any way out of it. I'm so terrified of causing conflict or of people disliking me that I generally go along with anything, even if it makes me uncomfortable or upset. It's a problem, but I don't really know what to do to stop it.

But yeah, weird conversations aside, it was a great night, and I'm only sorry that D had to leave before I could move into this awesome house. I'm done with living in crappy college accommodation, and finding it fantastic to be living with people of my choice, friends whose company I enjoy.

I'll try to get photos of my new room up as soon as possible.

I compounded the bizarreness of the party by forcing everyone to listen to 'Land Down Under'. Yeah, I don't even know why I did that myself.

There's some weird editing going on there, but here's my latest Bookshow blog post.

Comments

[katiefoolery.livejournal.com]

It's a hard problem to deal with, because we're brought up to be nice and not cause conflict and always think of others before ourselves... and it kind of screws us up a little. Of course, it helps if you have a friend who's going to encourage you to get over it, which you do.

[dolorosa-12.livejournal.com]

Women/girls especially are brought up to be like this, unfortunately. I've actually got quite a few friends who are trying to help me to change, but it's hard to let go of such ingrained habits. It's so much easier to be nice, and go along with stuff, and standing up for yourself is hard.

[(Anonymous)]

I think there's an important distinction to be drawn between "thinking of others" and "avoiding conflict."

I definitely aspire to do more of the former; but to be honest I'm quite proud of my willingness, for example, to argue for values and ideas that matter to me, without undue concern about the risk of offending people I care for.

Of course I worry that this habit of strongly arguing my point, which I consider healthy, sometimes translates into me getting my own way in cases where I end up arguing selfishly more than fairly, and other people are just too conflict adverse to call me out on it.

- Jordan

[dolorosa-12.livejournal.com]

To be honest, Jordan, on some kind of level I know you're right. I do tend to let things slide rather than arguing my beliefs, partly because I tend to find debates scary and confrontational, rather than intellectually stimulating and exhilerating (as I think some people do). It probably owes something to my upbringing and also general diffidence that I perceive anyone talking in a heated tone of voice as being hostile and quite threatening. As a child it would really upset me to be shouted at (and thus it happened very rarely) and I suspect some of this has bled over into my adult demeanour. I need to try to be otherwise, as (as I've talked about in the past to you) it's got me into some rather bad situations.

Of course I worry that this habit of strongly arguing my point, which I consider healthy, sometimes translates into me getting my own way in cases where I end up arguing selfishly more than fairly, and other people are just too conflict adverse to call me out on it.

I think this depends entirely on with whom you're debating. Surely by now you know which people are interested in debating and which are conflict-averse, at least among your close friends?