Identity Crisis.

I seem to have developed a bit of social anxiety in my return home.

I find myself always with this bubbling fear that I will look awkward, be awkward or in any way draw attention to myself.

Pretty pathetic, right?

It comes, also, with a crisis of age identity. This was something on my mind even as I came home—that I am 25 and I want to act and look and be 25—but was heightened when I was offered a 10-and-under children’s menu at a restaurant a few days into the revival of my American life. (I am not joking. Not a bit. True, self-esteem-crashing story.) And the fear was fine-tuned each of the numerous occasions where people honestly and earnestly mistook me for a teenager. And especially when they remained skeptical or simply refused to believe that I was, indeed, two and a half decades old.

I suppose this is somewhat just part of culture shock. I have a deep dread of putting myself in a situation where I’ll do something wrong or embarrass myself. I guess in Lopit I knew I was doing everything wrong, so there was no mystery left in it? Or then there’s the feeling that everyone is looking at me funny. And sometimes people are… but mostly only when I’m trying to explain to them how I feel really strange and like everyone is looking at me funny. What is obviously ridiculousness and over-thinking to them is (perhaps inexplicably?) very real to me.

I’m confident that this is just a stage and I’ll snap out of it soon enough. But, until then, you’re going to have to bear with me, I guess. Or try extra hard to pry me out of the safety of my parents’ house.