I am feeling happy because for the first time in a long time I feel like I actually friends again. I don't mean I didn't have friends, but it means so much to have physically-present friends that you can actually hang out with and tease and understand...in Thai you say "kuy kan rue rueng" - like you understand each other when you talk.

It really helps me to come out of my shell when I have friends like that. For awhile I had gotten terribly introverted and reserved in the sense that I was kind of trapped inside myself and didn't know how to interact with the world.

I'm definitely still an introvert, but it helps me to come out more when I have friends I feel I can trust and who I feel understand me. It is a terrible feeling not to know where you stand with people and always feeling that they're on the verge of hating you if you do something wrong - which, I'm sure that wasn't the case but I always felt that way.

I guess today (or maybe in the past week or so) something changed. I guess it's the fruit of long months of labor of hanging out w/ people and trying to understand them - what makes them tick, what makes them laugh, what they like and don't like - and finally the fruit of it all is...well...connection. Healthy connection - not dependency.

Interesting.