My mother told me stories from her childhood today. About growing up in an impoverished Asian island country in the middle of a civil war, about relatives who were held as political prisoners, about almost being captured herself (thoughts of being taken and simply disappearing, something that she laughs off so easily now), about my grandmother. It's so strange, seeing my family in their youth, not much older than me and yet so much braver.

I wonder why I'm still my grandmother's favorite. My grandmother as a young woman was a natural, flawless socialite, a person who could befriend anyone and everyone, glowing with beauty, strong and admirably courageous--and I'm just not like her, in every way possible. I'm overly cautious; I'm not gorgeous; it's difficult being close to me at all (as much as I loathe to admit it, although I like to think that I'm getting better); I'm not very shy, but I don't talk much anyway. Why does she still favor me when I'm so different? When I'm so not amazing in the many ways that she was?

I don't know. I wish I were... more social, at least; I feel like I stick out from my family like a cucumber in a pile of apples. No one in my overly-large pool of relatives even writes; my parents and siblings are science-inclined, for godsakes, and I know that I'm odd enough already without that lack of a connecting thread between me and everyone else.

I don't know. I thought I had fully gotten over that "I hate being the weird one" thing, but I guess not.