I’ve heard that people become psychologists so they can figure themselves out. They want to know why they can’t seem to trust anyone, or why they only date men who have full beards. So they get psychology degrees, and they get answers.

I should get a degree. I want answers. And psychology is a worthwhile field that pays better than food services. But I can’t become a psychologist, because if I did, I know I would go crazy.

My love affair with psychology started unusually early. I was a naïve thirteen. It was a forty-year-old copy of The Power of Love by Eric Fromm. We met at a garage sale near Kidd Valley, where I forked over seventy-five cents to get my soft, eager hands on Fromm’s fully developed musings.

Although it was easily one of the most boring things I have ever read, I loved The Power of Love because it gave me power. I knew why people sought out different types of love (parent-child, brother-brother, mentor-mentee), and I wanted to know more.

I was hooked on psychology.

Since then, I’ve spent my hard-earned babysitting cash on books about body language, split-second decision making, positive thinking, the rise and fall of certain fads, the peculiar sensuality of the French, and, of course, dating and relationships. I’ve wiled away secretive hours in the self-help section of Barnes and Noble, ignoring the Kama Sutra flashcard booklet in favor of In Praise of Slowness: Challenging the Cult of Speed.

These books provided me with entertainment and tidbits of cocktail conversation. They also provided me with answers. Lots of answers. Too many answers.

Psychology hasn’t helped me figure myself out. In fact, the more I learn about my own psychology, the less I’m sure of why I do what I do. If I don’t feel like calling someone back, that means I’m lazy…right? But now I know it could also mean that I suffer from extreme social anxiety, that I’m trying to increase my desirability by being an Ice Queen, or that I have a subtle-yet-serious fear of commitment.

My acquired knowledge raises infinite questions about others as well. I find myself struggling for hours to determine the motives behind the simplest of actions.

For instance, why did the guy in that truck just flip me off? Was he… a) angry and flustered because I cut him off in a wild merging attempt, b) confused about local hand signals, or c) flirting, third-grade style?

Or, why didn’t my near-boyfriend who bags groceries at QFC say hi to me today? Was he… a) really, really busy getting the plastic bags ready for the next customer, b) ignoring me, because our relationship ended when I spilled that bag of lentils on Aisle 5 last week, or c) playing hard to get?

I don’t know. It could be any of the three.

But I do know one thing. If I become a psychologist, multiple-choice questions like those above won’t have just three choices. They’ll have dozens of choices, and each choice will be scientifically sound, with studies and bar graphs to prove its validity. I will spend the rest of my life trying to decide if it was his temperament responding to external stressors or some specific childhood experience that made the truck driver decide to rear-end my turquoise Mercury Sable, a beloved family car. And, frankly, that does not sound like very much fun. It also doesn’t sound very healthy.

College is just around the corner, and every week I find myself getting increasingly nervous. I know that almost any school I end up attending will offer at least a basic psychology class. I’ll be sorely tempted to sign up — here I am, getting hand tremors and sweating just thinking about it — but I’ll need to hold back, exercise a little bit of restraint. Maybe I’ll get a resistance trainer or a special coach or something. I’m not going to pay twenty thousand dollars a year to go insane. Even though I kind of want to learn Freud’s contemporaries’ thoughts about the Oedipus complex.