I believe I made it clear in my short post the other day that this page is my place to vent, not a censored place to express only what will make other people happy to read it. I’m an editor. Perfecting writing is what I do. Because of that, I go over everything I write several times before I put it where there’s a chance anyone else might see it. This sentence is being typed on my sixth pass through this post. While some people might think this means I still mean everything I said, or even that I still think I was right to write it, that’s not the case. The post I wrote in tears Tuesday night was less edited than, say, this one, but it was still art for me, an effective and cathartic response to a particular moment in time that’s now gone.

Yes, I cry when I get even the slightest bit frustrated or upset. It’s not a big deal. It’s not heart-wrenching, and it’s not painful. It’s just how my face works. But yes, on several occasions last week I was upset. If you knew me better, you could judge it for what it is: an emotional reaction, a reaction that is soon fully under my control and that does not affect the workings of my brain or my ability to understand its ridiculousness.

Yes, I had a panic attack during the luau. I do not handle crowds of strangers well unless I have a clear idea of what I’m supposed to be doing and where I’m supposed to be going. If you knew me better, you’d be aware of that too, and the fact that simply being out of my element, feeling (wrongly, as it turns out) that I was somehow responsible for other people’s successful happiness as well as my own, and surrounded by things I didn’t know how to handle bugged me a little and I needed to go away to deal with it.

Yes, I only twice took the time and trouble to pour the sand out of the damn bottle and dig out the scroll with a long skinny screwdriver (I don’t have any knitting needles) and untie and unroll the invitation to read it, and I remembered it wrong. (Was I supposed to smash the bottle, or bring it with me, or assume anyone else had read and remembered theirs?) The only thing about the invitation that really stuck with me was that it used the same exact font (Wiesbaden Swing) that’s been on kostia.net for years.

I did have fun, not that that seems to matter now. It IS fun to me to sit in the sun and read, to lie lazily in a nice hotel room and listen to the ocean. These are things I cannot do at home, and they are far superior to working. Yes, I was scared to spend a hundred bucks to go scuba diving. While it’s not like everyone else had a great time scuba diving and had no complaints whatsoever, I understand that to some people that situation (having “been there” and “done that” and “given it the old college try”) is preferable to the avoidance of the unpleasant parts. That’s simply not how I think, and I’m okay with that. Yes, I had no interest in surfing, which seemed more likely to cause me injury than fun. Not like everyone came back from that completely unscathed. Same thing.

In social situations I tend to wait for other people to make decisions because I’m afraid of making one that other people won’t like. When someone else in a group I’m in chooses what I wouldn’t have chosen, I find it difficult to speak up. Not being the chooser in the first place is an easy way to avoid that situation. I believe my close friends are aware of this and tend to steer around it without really realizing it. It works out fine. This is the same reason I prefer not to choose a table in a restaurant if I’m not alone, unless I have to.

When I’m driving, I think I expect the other people in the car to navigate if possible. I think this is simply a tiny facet of the environment in which I was raised and the observations I made before I learned to drive. In the car as everywhere else, my parents’ partnership was completely understood and unspoken. I understand that not everyone learned the same way.

I understand that people see the same events in different ways. You know I had some other, stupider shit going through my head last week, and I could kick myself for letting that distract me so much.

To sum up: If you made my vacation different than it could have been, then it’s only fair that I seem to have done the same for you.

You know what the best part of this vacation was for me? Coming home and giving presents to Lisa and David and their kids. That’s my family. Those are the people that matter the most to me for a thousand miles in any direction. They were all so happy to see me and seemed really pleased with what I picked out for them.

That, and the stars, were worth all of this shit. Every bit.