Unfortunate Self-Discovery
But I'm not at a party. I don't even have plans to meet up with anyone. I am alone in my room, writing a blog post that I'll publish but not publicize because sometimes I want to talk but not be heard. Sometimes I just want to convert my thoughts into keystrokes at my computer and send them into the void with hopes that they won't be forgotten, regardless of the lack of readers. Because that's not what it's about.
Why am I here instead of out with friends? I like blogging, but this is prime hangout time. The best time. I can blog whenever I want, so why now? In a few hours my school is going to have a fun event that I wanted to go to but I can't seem to find the willpower to actually get myself to go. What's the deal?
Well, here's what's happening. I've attended college for a little over a month now, and while I've learned a lot in my classes, I've also begun to discover some things about myself. It's weird to get to know yourself because you think that if there's anyone that really knows you, the real you, it's got to be, well, you. But when you're living your life and you realize that the idea of who you are, the picture of yourself that you have in your head, is off, well, it'll throw you for a loop.
So I guess here are a couple things I've learned about myself recently. Or things I already knew about myself that are changing/becoming bigger and honestly I don't really know how to feel.
I'm less social than I thought I was.
In high school, I never considered myself a popular person. I knew who the popular kids were, and although I didn't hate them I was definitely content not associating with them. This isn't to say they were bad people, I just knew that I didn't fit with them. But one of the things that I did like in high school is that I felt semi-comfortable in a lot of different groups or cliques. I mean maybe I didn't fit in every single group out there but I felt like I could easily get along with a lot of people that weren't necessarily in the same group. I considered myself a decently social person and talked fairly easily with a lot of people.
A long time after graduation I developed a theory about myself: I was the color gray. If you ask anyone what their favorite color is, you might hear green or blue or pink or red or just about any color, but how often would someone actually claim that their favorite color, the hue they gravitate towards more than any other, is gray? That doesn't happen. But here's what gray is: gray is the ultimate compliment. Gray goes with everything. Look:
Images via https://www.stylishwedd.com/
And so that's kind of how I feel about who I was in high school. I don't think of myself as the main event, but the small compliment in the background. Maybe my perception's skewed, but I feel like in high school there was probably no one that would have called me their best friend (or their favorite color) but there were a fair amount of people that would have called me their friend.
So in college what's been happening is that socializing is a lot more optional. It's really easy to just avoid people and social interaction in general and go from class to class without anyone raising any eyebrows. Now some people try to get out there and meet people, and that's the kind of person that I thought I was going to be. But that's not the kind of person I am. The main way (and actually basically the only way) that I make new friends at the current moment is when my friends introduce me to their friends. It's not that I can't talk to new people, because I can. I could go up to just about anyone and start a conversation. So why don't I? Well, that's actually something I don't know. Is it laziness? Is it social anxiety? Is it fear? Is it the voice inside my head that says that that person doesn't want to talk to me? In truth, it's probably a combination of all of these things to one degree or another. But at the end of it all, I've discovered that I am content with having a low profile, keeping my mouth shut, and not causing any problems even if that means not making new friends along the way. Well... kind of. I mean I want to make new friends but I want to make new friends the same way that most people want to travel the world: the desire is there, but the likelihood of actually taking the plunge and jumping on the plane, due to one inhibition or the other, is slim.
I guess this leads me to the next thing I've been learning about myself:
My fear of people not truly liking me is probably getting worse.
As humans, we have a desire to be liked and accepted by our peers. This desire drives a lot of the things that we do.
I don't typically feel like I place a lot of importance on people's opinions of me, but I hate asking people if they want to spend time with me because I always feel like they don't actually like me and would just hang out with me because they don't want to be rude. I know how stupid this is. I know, I know, I know, but I can't help it.
This has gotten so bad where I will literally stay home (like tonight) instead of simply sending a text message asking someone to hang out because I don't like the thought of someone thinking "Well, I didn't really want to hang out with Giancarlo tonight but I don't have any better plans and I don't want him to feel bad so I guess I will." I KNOW THIS IS DUMB BUT I CAN'T STOP WORRYING ABOUT IT SO LONG STORY SHORT HERE I AM AT HOME.
This subconscious fear of people simply tolerating my presence instead of actually liking me has been going on for a while but it's been getting worse lately. Add on the fact that I don't have a lot of friends up here and it's just not a fun time. And when I overthink it (like I'm doing now) it gets worse. When I think about how I'm doing, I always feel like I'm doing fine, but then my worries about things like this creep in and suddenly I'm not so carefree anymore.
One last thing I've learned about myself:
One last thing I've learned about myself:
My hatred for being an inconvenience to others continues to show its head.
One of the things I hate the most is being an inconvenience to someone. I hate it when I make people wait for me or give me rides or do me favors in general. I guess I just don't like depending on other people because I know they have better things to do with their day than helping me out. I know that there are good people out there that are willing to lend me a hand, but asking for that help goes back to the problem I have with asking people if they want to hang out with me: I don't have the confidence that I have reached a point where I could comfortable ask for help with just about anyone, including my good friends.
So here's why this matters tonight. I'm sitting in my room and I think Oh! I could text this person and see what they're up to! But the problem is that if they are busy (and in my head all people are always doing something) then I would not only ask to tag along to whatever they're doing (which they may or may not be down to allow), but then I would also have to ask them for a ride to get there because I don't have a car up here and I'm not a huge fan of walking great distances in Logan's 30ยบ temperatures... which means I would take them away from said activity for a time. So to avoid that conflict, I just sit in my room and tonight, I blog. On other nights, I watch Netflix (if I'm being real, I'm going to do that anyway) or I go to bed or I waste my time on social media or whatever.
So all of these things (my developing introversion, my lack of self-confidence, my dislike for causing people inconvenience) are combining to make me, at least right now, someone I didn't think I'd be.
