considering hermitage

I'm beggining to discover that in general people bring out the worst in me and I bring out the worst in people. All my life I have never been too much of a social person and I am beginning to understand why. The past month with my family in Aparri and the last three days with my father's relatives in Manila has put me in a roller coaster of emotions.

I've never experienced mood shifts in such short time intervals as I am experiencing now. One moment I am happily chatting the morning away with my brothers then the next comes an outburst from my father on how we all waste our time doing nothing. Some days are uneventful and then my 12-year old brother Paul picks up a fight with my 16-year old brother Kevin and the scenario ends with my mother succesfully making them stop but only through waiiling her heart's disappointment of all of us. She begins to rave on how she works hard at the drugstore and goes on to rant on how ungrateful we are and how unhappy we make her feel. Yesterday, I even had to endure hours of my aunt's wrath on her college kid who got booted out of La Salle and is now enrolling in a computer academy in Makati. We were driving to Tuguegarao from Manila and boy could she go on and on and on. The next two-hour ride with my dad from Tuguegarao to Aparri was more pleasant. I am glad my dad and I are able to talk now comfortably about family matters. I'm happy I'm beggining to be treated as an adult, with my opinions asked and my suggestions taken into account. Albeit pleasant, the talks were about family and families are always rigged with issues. Truly, I mingle with emotional vampires.

I realize that I feel happier when I am alone in the big city cooking my own meals, doing my own laundry, cleaning my own room, doing my own business as usual. I like to move in my own space and time. I hate it when other stuff are mixed with mine but I hate it more when my stuff get lost in others. I don't like waiting but I definitely cannot stand being waited at. I don't like it when people get too nosy regarding my affairs and I'm not the inquisitive type at all. I can only tolerate a few people and now that I think about it, the common thing about them is that they are people who know their boundaries as well as mine. And I am most fine with that.

I do sound like an egoistic bitch who doesn't know how to live life, an escapist who can't accept that life requires having to deal with people and their differing attitudes and characteristics. But I can't help it much if this is how I feel. I'm not much of a people-person but I don't consider mysef a loner either. I think that I'm somewhere in between as I am in most things usually. I used to wonder what makes people just clam up. Now I think I quite understand why introverts do. Can anyone really blame them if in their solitary world and only there can they actually feel good about themselves? Can anyone raise their brows and wrinkle their noses if in their own world and only there can they find their peace?