I had long been suffered from "language." That is to say, I didn't know how to speak in a proper way, or how to manipulate my language to maintain my social relationship. "You should learn some speaking skills!" my mother always told me. True, my words were usually monotonous, which always made others believe I was difficult to get along with. But actually, I just didn't think I needed to pay too much enthusiasm for trivial things. For instance,

    "Joy! Come and look at this hat!"

    "Well, it's OK."

    "Come on, would you like to try?"

    "No, thanks."

And that was how conversations ended. And that was why I was often a loner. I knew that my monotonous words dampened others' enthusiasm, but I just didn't know how to "embed" emotions in words when I didn't have any in conversation.

However, in order to be normal and to get rid of the tag as a loner, I had to master how to make a successful conversation. Conversations were far more difficult than math problems: in conversation, I had to anticipate people's reactions and make adequate responses, which, by definition of "adequate", should be enthusiastiic enough to continue the conversation; by contrast, mathematics only required straightforward logic. Although few of my fellows had difficulties in making proper conversations, I was really frustrated by conversation with girls. It was not simply to embed varied intonation into conversation; to converse successfully, I had to consider others' intention of starting the conversation, control my intonation to be neither apathetic nor excessively ebullient. In short, it is never too much to call it a skill.

    Once I tried to make a change, my friends all had unexpected reactions.

    "Joy, what's wrong with you?"

    "Joy, why your voice sounds so strange?"

And so on. Apparently, I didn't excel in language use yet. Knowing my frustration, my mother pointed out my obvious defect.

"You are not sincere when you converse. You don't really feel as what you should. Thus your voice sounds awkward and unnatural. Joy, you should try to believe that you are truly engaged in the conversation; by doing so, you can capture the natural emotions that you SHOULD have when you make certain comments."

The instruction was not hard to follow. In order to socialize, when I needed to agree with others in some trivial things I would first persuade myself that the subjects were truly meaningful and then made plausible reactions. And it worked.

    "Joy! Come and look at this t-shirt in the window!"

    "Wow, it's so cute! It will match well with your skirt!"

    "Really? I know you love this brand!"

Finally, the conversation could last longer. I was happay because I found the secret of socialization. As the time passed by, I had more friends since I was always energetic and always comments positively, which could make them feel more comfortable in conversation. People tend to talk instead of listening, so they can be pleased easily by meaningless agreement. However, I actually sacrificed my own will to socialize: I was not enthusiastic about those uninteresting conversations; everytime when I made unnatural comments, I cheated myself into believing some fake emotions.

Over time, I found that I could easily get along with most people I met and the loner became a past tense. I thought the useful self-deception could help me assimilate in social norms, but obviously I underestimated the power of language.

    "Good morning, Joy."

    "Good morning Jane! You look so beautiful today!"

    "Thank you! You too!"

Jane couldn't hide her smile any more and bounced to the classroom. Clearly, she was pleased by my flattery, but I wasn't. All of a sudden, I sank into deep confusion---I spoke out the flattery unconsciously and I couldn't sense my true thought any more. I mean, after speaking out so many disingenuous flatteries and cheating myself to believe what I should believe, I began to question whether the flattery was what I should say or what I really believe. Frankly, Jane was truly a pretty girl, but I didn't know whether my words were sincere appraisals or hypocritical comments. After the repition of self-seception, I could speak out the insincere flattery so easily that it became spontaneous process. However, was this spontaneous flattery my true thought? Did I really think Jane beautiful or did I just praise insincerely?

Language has power. Repitition of same ideas over and over again could supplant the former ones, though not eradicated them. In V for Vendetta, V told Eve,"You wear a mask for so long, you forget who you were beneath it." I said the insincere words for so long that I forgot my true thoughts beneath them. That's the power of language. Though you believe that you could clearly distinguish the disingenuous words and the genuine ones, after a long time of self-deceiving, you would finally blur the truth and the fake. Just like I couldn't distinguish whether I thought Jane was beautiful or I just made up spontaneous flattery.

I began to evaluate if I should maintain the so-called socialization. I mean, what is the point of making so many unnecessary friends who have totally different interest and preserve the relationships merely for some pleasant flattery instead of true thoughts? What is the point of being gregarious?

Gradually, I realized that my so-called social relationship was so pathetic. Some of my friends were pathetic because they made friends with a fake person disguised herself with lots of ingenuine words. But I was the most pathetic one. Why did I try so hard to socialize? It was the fear of being different; it was the doubt of my justifiable nonchalance. I feared that not conforming to social norms, not enjoying what I was supposed to enjoy was abnormal. I feared that not being social was a sign of incapability. I feared that others would call me a loner. So I worked so hard to pretend that I enjoyed what other girls mostly enjoyed and disguised my true self with disingenuous words to maintain relationships. After paying so much effort, I lost my self.

I heard a girl shouted deep in my heart, defiantly, "Why do I mind being different? That's my unqie personality!" True, after encountered some people like me, I knew that it was not horrible to be a loner; it was not horrible to be uninterested in girl's topic. For me, it was even better to just look out of the window and count on the tree leaves rather than having those boring conversations.

    "Joy! Look at my dress!"

    "Well, it's OK."

    "Oh my God! What's wrong with you? You were quite excited about the new dress yesterday."

    "I'm fine. Really."

    I looked out of the window again.