And here's where my internal conflict rears it's ugly head. I am bad, *really* bad with words when I seem to need them most, when I should really be expressing myself. The synapses in my brain start firing madly, and a small lump of something gestates somewhere in my throat, and in those moments you could point a gun at my head and it wouldn't phase me because the fear of being vulnerable is the only thing I can feel. I don't base my life on astrology, but to give you any idea of how I experience emotions, I'm a textbook scorpio. In a nutshell, I torture myself with what-if's, and flail wildly between wretched self-doubt and whistful daydreams, all the while knowing full well that reality probably lies somewhere between the two. I think it's because, in general, I pass through life knowing myself really well -- how I feel about things, where I stand in situations, what tomorrow's going to be like -- and things generally flow at a pretty even tempo. I handle disappointment and success well because I usually don't ever really burn for anything. Yeah, if I don't make the Dean's List in any given semester, it irritates me... but I use that irritation to motivate me all the more next time and it doesn't have a chance to really get me down. But it's different when I start to really hope for something. My survival mechanisms are just as strong and adequate for dealing with real disappointment, but since it's a sting I'm rarely in a position to experience, I tend to forget that there isn't really anything I can't handle. So now that I've been yanked from the familiarity of apathy and even-ness, the same old fears and insecurities are surfacing, and I'm being such a goober that it's getting on my nerves. So if I'm not shouting from the mountain tops, dear reader, it's because the words that can't keep up with me are getting stuck in my throat.