Finding the pet in the peeve.

In a little less than two weeks I'll be heading north to the town I grew up in to celebrate my high school reunion, and in revisiting the past and reflecting on who I've been and who I've become, one thing has been consistent through the years. Of course, I say that meaning that several things have remained similar, a lot has gotten better, but one overwhelming characteristic about me has been the same since my earliest memories. My pet peeve. The one thing I wish that I could change about me. I HATE it when I ask a question and receive no response. Or, more importantly, I hate who I become when this happens.

Perhaps it's that I grew up in a loud and chaotic family where "he who is loudest is king of conversation" that I grew sensitive to lack of a response to a question posed. Perhaps it's that most questions that were heard received the response "handle it, handle it" or were even ignored or avoided that makes me so unsettled when a question is asked only to be met with silence. Perhaps it's that I'm afraid that the person whom I've posed the question to no longer cares to respond, is no longer interested in a relationship.

Charles learned long ago that the easiest way to make this confident, secure, intelligent, witty and fun person crumble into the unshakably clingy child that I was long ago is to ignore and remain silent to an honest question. I hate that I devolve almost instantaneously into a frantic almost shrieking girl that the more he seems to ignore, the more frantic I become. I've tried to change it; to excise it from who I am, yet every attempt fails. I loathe that person. That caricature of the feminine. I know. I hate to generalize, but I wonder if it is a girl thing.

How many times have you been out shopping to find a guy walking stoutly with purpose in a specific direction while his girlfriend/wife walks alongside becoming more and more frantic as she asks him questions and he fails to respond? I know how she feels, and yet I silently wish her the strength to become silent and hold her own. I wish that for her, and I wish that for myself more than anything.

As I prepare to head north, to remember the days gone by and celebrate the person I've become, I hope that one friend in particular can overlook this awful flaw of mine that has driven them away over time, so that for one brief moment they can give me the chance to show them calm, the fun, the remarkable side of me, because I miss their friendship. I miss our conversations, and I miss that in having this trait they think I am what they avoid with ever fiber of their being; a clingy simpering chick. What I hate most is that they ever saw that side of me, that pet peeve of me.

In the meantime, I'm trying to find the bright side of not having a question answered. Perhaps it's not the answer that I'm seeking, perhaps it's asking the question itself and how it came to be that is important.