I made it to Orlando, after an utterly uneventful trip; everything was on schedule, even me, which was looking doubtful when I went to bed last night knowing that I would need to get up at four a.m. But, I made it to the airport in time to grab something to eat, slept most of the way to Chicago (and occasionally served as a pillow for the girl next to me, unfortunately), got to my next flight with no trouble, and read a book all the way to Orlando. This proved to be a mistake, for reasons that you will see shortly. When I got to Orlando, my luggage came out fairly quickly, I made it to a shuttle just as it was about to depart (with ten female romance conference attendees and one confused male engineer who was going to another hotel), and I got checked into my room about an hour after I landed.
Because I was feeling v. sticky, I took a shower, blow-dried my hair (shocker, I know), and put on decent clothes to go downstairs and explore. I wanted to get a bit of a feel for the layout, so I walked around for a v. brief bit, then had a leisurely sushi dinner at one of the hotel restaurants while continuing to read the book that I had started on the plane.
But reading it tonight was a disaster; I should have sought people out, and instead I couldn't tear myself away from the book, so I read it on a large font on my Kindle in the dim light of a sushi bar/lounge, eating reasonably good sushi and drinking a ridiculously large glass/jug of sangria made with Japanese plum wine. I'm glad that I finished the book, but at the same time I know I read it because I am a coward. It's kind of funny how ridiculously, paralyzingly shy I can be sometimes, when all the indignities of my bleak adolescence that I've managed to almost entirely suppress/forget come crawling around the edges of my brain to point their mocking fingers at me and make me feel like I'm in eighth grade again, wearing exactly the wrong thing, too eager to lose myself in a book so that I don't have to think about the fact that I don't have any friends, desperately wishing that my life was different. I've managed to overcome the fashion demon (or, more accurately, have twisted it so that I'm now an addict, if a coworker's comment last week that I'm always wearing something awesome and it's always something she's never seen me wear before is any indication) -- but that same feeling of not knowing where to sit in the lunch room, the sickening dread of having to sit by the same dude in English class who relentlessly tormented me day after day after day, swamps me at the most inopportune times. Times like in the checkin line today, when I realized the woman in front of me was an editor who had my manuscript last fall and liked it but ultimately passed, and I didn't make any attempt to introduce myself because I didn't want to inconvenience her or make things awkward (because it would be awkward to have to talk to someone you rejected, right?)
Anyway, I should just get over it, since the people who hurt me the worst are quickly dying of drug overdoses and the like (the life expectancy of my high school class is short, apparently, since 5% of them have already died). And I escaped, and am following my dreams, and I have the most fabulous collection of shoes that a girl could hope to have. And if nothing else, I can cloak myself in any one of a dozen pairs of designer sunglasses and pretend like I haven't a care in the world. But I hate hate hate feeling like a teenager sometimes, when I've tried so hard to become the more open, trusting, outgoing girl I was on the path to becoming before the slings and arrows of a few stupid assholes crushed her.
Apparently the pitcher of plum wine sangria that I polished off has made me maudlin, even though I'm not drunk; I'll still tag this 'blame it on the alcohol' anyway, even though I was feeling this awful shyness well before the first sip of that sweet nectar hit my lips. So I'm going to go to bed, get up tomorrow, gird myself for battle in my favorite dress, perfectly applied makeup, and killer heels, and meet new people even if it kills me. Which it won't, because romance writers are some of the nicest people on the planet, and not a single one of them would dream of urinating in someone's locker in junior high (although that, actually, didn't happen to my locker -- but rather, to my few at-the-time-tentative friends down the hall, which would have been funny if it wasn't such a disgusting biohazard). And I will stop feeling sorry for myself, even if the memories can't be killed with a drug overdose as easily as the people responsible for them can. Goodnight!
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