I adore my
friends, they are loyal, funny, classy, supportive I love spending time with
them, talking and socializing but sometimes it can get too much. Some mornings
I wake up and I just can’t face socializing that day, I feel like my opinions
are unimportant, my presence unwanted. I feel that because I’m not loud, classy
or funny they may not want me to be there but sometimes I just like to observe
and listen.
Sometimes I
know that I am very different to my friends, I prefer gigs to clubs, I like music
that to most just sounds like a screaming mess, but to me it may as well be the
sweetest symphony, my friends prefer the gentle hum of an acoustic guitar and
the soft serenading sounds of an Englishman. I often wonder if these slight
differences are more like a canyons too vast for any of us to jump over, I worry that these differences
set me apart from all the rest to the point that they just don’t want me around
anymore.
I am unable
to decipher if the lack of response from a text or Facebook message as a silent
recognition or blatant ignorance. I often chose the latter, branding silences as
a dislike for my character or that they are just bored of me possibly I am annoying.
I worry that I have been replaced by a shiner a more eccentric friend someone
who can offer so much more than myself.
It is no
exaggeration when I say that people scare me, quite often I find that people are neither here
nor there, I can never solve the expression on my friend’s face when I rave
about a novel, I cannot see if she stares intent with great interest or if she
is dreaming of more pressing matters. I
find people difficult to read. I do not have the ability to see if your one
word answers reflect boredom or just the concept that you are just busy.
I know fear
rejection after losing people over and over again for no specific cause. I
worry that people who the friends who mean the most will leave I do not fear fierce
disagreements; I fear disappearance without a word. This year I lost someone
who I felt highly of, one day she was here, and the next she was not. Her responses
to my messages non-existent against my enthusiastic greetings, she left no
clues as to why she cut me out she just cut me dead like a phone line, merciless
to a wild tornado. I too felt merciless, I asked and asked myself how someone I
loved so much could just leave me like that, that question still haunts me.
I always
thought that social anxiety was a pretend disorder that tragic girls on tumblr claimed . I thought that it was just a pretend label used to attract desired attention.
It was not until I started college that it hit me, it punched me when I still
ate lunch alone in my second year unable to wiggle into any friendship group
unable to feel a part of anything. I didn’t
talk to people not because I was rude or obnoxious but I just didn’t have
anything interesting or valid to say, I feared judgement but most of all I feared that they wouldn’t like me just because they didn’t like the same things
as me. When I passed peers in the corridor, people assumed that I was rude but
the idea of saying hello made me want to vomit.
Today I
still feel worried about starting conversations, I get concerned that people may sigh when they see my greeting thinking “it’s her again, she’s so annoying” I feel that my conversations waste people’s
time and they could be taking to someone they like much better.
I guess
this causes barriers when I am trying to form relationships with the people
around it, please be patient, I am working on it, I just want to be appreciated
and loved for who I am.
Always,
Lauren ,
Twitter- @LaurenCats7
Instagram –
redhairedcatlady
Goodreads- https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/27290164-lauren
At the
moment I am reading: The City of Fallen Angels by Cassandra Clare
