The Hardest Part of Life

Because large groups are scary, new people are scary, relationships are scary, small groups are a little less scary, talking with people is scary . . . all the things are scary.

But yay for dancing!

My Awkward Social Scenes

I'm not very good at talking to certain people, for different reasons, of course.  The bigger the group, the more I tend to fade into the background.  As I'm fading, I usually run into Brandon Campbell on my way.  We talk anywhere from fifteen minutes to half an hour before we usually get noticed and pulled into some game or other.  We then play that game for awhile, and then both quit.  A little while later I've fallen back to my previous faded position, and soon Brandon goes off to converse with someone else (as is polite, in such a large group) and I finish my fading.

My problem with that situation is that I always feel awkward when talking to Brandon, because I feel like I'm doing a lot, if not all, of the talking.  Also, I feel that he is quite a bit more intelligent than I am, so I feel like he possibly doesn't want to listen to someone that he can't be edified by.  He's a great guy.  We're on the mission council together, and usually can't look at each other without laughing.  Still, it's always one of those awkward situations for me.

And when I say I fade, I mean it.  I become pretty much invisible.  I can just sit and observe and no one speaks to me or asks if I would be interested in joining into conversation or games.  Just try and invite yourself, you say?  When I interject phrases into conversations going on, it seems like they hear me and see me, but don't want to--as if their brains aren't wanting to register that there's a being speaking.  I tried to invite myself into a rotation of ping pong, and when I got up to ask they just started another game.  Really, I'm pretty invisible.  The only way someone seems to notice me is if I get hit by something.  They see me there, apologize, and quickly move on.  Hence why I hate big group things--especially if I am in the mood to speak to other people instead of observe.

Then there's the threesome.  You're in a car, and you know both people, but one you don't know very well, and the other you know better but don't know what to say to him/her because you don't exactly know where your spot in the social hierarchy is.  So, you sit there quietly.  And, in the course of the car ride the one you know better starts talking to you, but nothing really registers.  By the time you've figured out that you're at a reasonably comfortable spot in the social hierarchy, it once again becomes awkward, because that puts the other person in the car as the odd man out: the bottom of the hierarchy, so to speak.

The whole car ride becomes one large, awkward situation bomb that will detonate if you say anything, because you don't want to spend all your time talking to the one you know better for fear of alienating the one you don't know as well, and since you don't know how well these two people know each other, it is impossible to tell which subject of conversation to choose that everyone can participate in.  Once again, I remain silent in such situations.  However, I don't have the talent of fading into the background here.  Person you know better will keep saying things to try and spark conversation with you, and the other, less known person will occasionally comment, but you know that you're the one that connects both of these people.  The heart of the conversation rests with you.  What do I do?  Panic and say nothing in that panic, of course.

Finally, there's the one on one situations.  There's always those couple people that are my friends, but I'm always in a state of annoyance with them.  So, when I get together to do something with one of these friends, I'm reminded anew of why I'm always so annoyed when I think about them.  Wishing and wishing and wishing with no action, leeching, my life's terrible--those kinds of things that people go on about that are okay once in awhile, but when talked about all the time really bother me.  However, I'm too nice/polite/aware of society's expectations to let them know how annoyed I am at them.  There will always be that one person who I can be really upset and angry at because of what they are doing and how it will affect their future, but when I see them I never say anything.  And there will always be the one person that I can be annoyed/angry at, see and then just get quiet and sad.

I think I expect too much of people.  If I expected less of them I probably wouldn't be so socially awkward and critical; I would probably be more pleased with the world and the people in it.  As it is, the more I see of the world, the more I am dissatisfied with it.

Floating Through Time and Groups

As I view the posts on a couple of friends' blogs, I am starting to feel rather dejected on my social state in life. All of my friends (maybe excluding you, Megs? I'm not sure since neither of us really hang out with each other in groups) have groups that they run in, whether those friends come from work, college, or old high school buddies. The closest thing I've ever had to a group of friends was Derek Jackson and Cody Wolverton (I exclude the Nik and Kestin group because I was dating Nik, making it a different relationship, and Kestin was my friend outside of that), which really wasn't very groupish either. Never in my life have I ever really fit in in any sort of group. At times I have I've merely been let in to observe, but not be part of, the group.

In high school Sarah James tried to fit me into the group of friends that consisted of Sam Speer, Andrew Schull, Jill Bowers, Chad Nielsen, Jenna Jay, and several others that I'm not going to name, because most of them just drifted in and out of the group. Being different when it came to how I was raised (my parents weren't active when I was little, and then when they became active I was taught that it was okay to associate with those not of our religion), which is probably why Sarah became friends with me at all (tangent--did you realize that if you take the r out of friends it spells fiends? Coincidence or not, since sometimes friends can be fiends), I wasn't very well accepted into the group, being nicknamed the Devil's Child and generally being treated strangely/savagely. Andrew, who was Sarah's boyf at the time, absolutely hated me (likes me now, for the record), and the guys in the group that I would have considered dating didn't like me either.

Really, my only real friend in the group besides Sarah was Chad. He was really quiet and listened to everything I had to say, rarely commenting, but I knew he was listening, because he laughed a lot. I enjoyed making him laugh, which is strange, because I generally don't like people to laugh at me. While I harbored some sort of symbiotic relationship with the group as a whole (most likely parasitic), I really enjoyed talking to Chad (we had a class together my junior year, which was awesome). Soon, however, because the feeling of being disliked set in strong, I decided that I would just go home to eat lunch, as I had just gotten my driver's license. Occasionally old friends came with me, but for the most part I went home alone to eat. I felt like Cady from the show Mean Girls, who doesn't fit in anywhere until accepted in by the plastics, which wasn't happening to me, so I was pretty much at a loss.

Soon high school was over, because I graduated a year early, and when I went to college things weren't much different. Trying to be outgoing just wasn't producing very many nice results. My swedish class was a tight knit group, and we all got along really well, and I tutored my friend Carin, who was really grateful for the help, but for the most part I was just alone all the time on campus.

Truly, I miss Wes Kirkham. When all my friends went on missions, he was there to take the place of those people, and he filled more of that place than I think even I realized until after he left on his mission to Croatia. He was the one that kept me going in classes I thought I was just going to drop out of or fail; he was the one who told me fascinating stories, whether about real life or about the book he was preparing to write, and it was amazing. I felt like I could be myself around him, and I really enjoyed it. It didn't matter that there wasn't a group. I screwed it all up by getting married. Now that I'm not married, I'm writing to him, but it isn't quite the same, because I neglected that relationship so much.

So, I guess the real problem is that I see what Megan Nield, Sarah, Mike, and Ashley Thayne have, want it, get it, and screw it all up. Such is life, I guess. My lot in it is to use people to get further in it and screw up any relationships I may have with people. The only people that stay constant are Megan and Sarah, for which I am truly grateful.