i’ve told many that I am really not an extrovert as many may have perceived and that I do not enjoy talking as much as others may think I do. Unfortunately, I have yet to meet anyone who can see, accept or agree that I am really am not a person who enjoys talking…

I don’t deny that I talk a lot. But honestly, most of the time I do it because I feel a need to. A need to break ice amongst people I just met, a need to make others feel comfortable with this new person they’ve met, A need to show others that I am not as cocky or snobbish as others may initially perceive me to be.

Lately, I’ve been talking a lot, a lot more than I usually do. And it is indeed tiring. I am currently involved in a project, where I have met new people who I need to work with well, with whom we need to form a good relationship for more effective team work and for all this to happen, there is a need to for me to put on the talkative, funny Felicita so that the awkwardness can be overcome. So, I talk, joke, be creative and interesting and witty and funny and fun. Things that make others feel comfortable and easy to be around me.

But….

Just because I can be all these since most of these qualities come quite easily for me, doesn’t mean I want to be or do all this.

Amongst the people that I work with, there is another group of people who happen to use the same facility with us for another program. I happen to know some of them. They are my Indian friends/family. I don’t necessarily know all of them well, don’t necessarily agree with everything they say, but I like them, respect them and enjoy their company for reasons I can’t really explain.

But these group of people, are very judgemental and often conclude that I am one cocky, arrogant girl with no respect to others just because I’m just not the super friendly kind. So, to prove to them that I am not what they think I am, I put on that friendly, fun, funny, witty, interesting character again.

All in all, it’s tiring… tiring because you have to constantly perform to ensure the other party is entertained and feel comfortable around you.

At the end of the day, I long, a lot, to just go home to someone who I don’t need to talk with at all, that I can be quiet all the way through and he’ll still find my company as meaningful as I would find his. I want to go home to someone who accepts my silence and doesn’t think there’s something wrong with me. I long to go home to someone who would take me in as who I am, with whom, I don’t have to be funny, or fun, or witty or creative or interesting. I want to go home to someone with whom I can be the plain me. The me who’s a lot quieter, a lot more thoughtful, the me who’s interested in listening to how their life as been…in its most genuine sense…life that is not masked by the temporary pleasures of life.

I see so many people around, so many friends, so many special individuals with whom I can feel a sense of inexplicable connection and yet, I wonder if there’s anyone who would be able to accept and understand the silent feli…

The fact that my real home is so far away and far from reach makes me hope that I’ll be able to create a home here for myself. A family. As weird as this may sound, but I don’t mind getting married at this age (to someone I love and who loves me back of course), simply because it would mean, I have a family here that I can go home to. But of course, I do wonder, if this family that I may have, requires me to be the funny, fun, witty feli or allows me to be the silent feli….