My lack of social interaction is a problem that feeds
itself, it reinforces itself.
I don’t interact much with people. When I do, I tend to feel awkward, and the
awkwardness makes me not want to interact with people. It often succeeds in
making me not interact with people. So that when I do interact, I’m “out of
practice” at it. And that probably makes me feel even more awkward than I
already would have felt.
Similarly, I don’t know people very well. I don’t talk to
people much, so I don’t get to know them, and I don’t know much about them. Then
when I see people in a social situation, I don’t have anything to say to them,
so I don’t talk to them. Often, in the moment, I don’t even think about going
over to people to even say hello. It just doesn’t occur to me until, possibly, sometime
later.
It’s not that I don’t want to be friends with people. I do (well,
maybe not all people). But I don’t feel like I’m good enough friends with
people to really just go over and to talk to them. Mainly because I just don’t
have much to say. I guess I’m just really boring.
Occasionally, when I’ve talked about this with people,
they’ve told me that I don’t seem that awkward. I guess I’ve fooled some
people. Yay? But I definitely feel it. So much so that I can’t imagine anyone
thinking of me as socially competent. At best, I assume people think I’m just
not very friendly.
Sometimes I DO talk to people and (at least at first) don’t
feel super awkward. But it seems like (when I think back on it later) I just
say a lot about whatever is going on in my life, even when it has nothing to do
with that person and the nature of our relationship or the situation we’re in
at that moment. In those instances, I probably seem desperate to talk, or maybe
seem like I just overshare. (And, of course, that makes me feel awkward in
hindsight.)
Have you experienced either of these things with me? How do
I seem to you when we’ve interacted in some social setting?
