I read this blog post title on Facebook, and I can certainly relate.
I remember talking about something and people would start talking, leave, interrupt, or ignore me by turning to talk to someone else. Sometimes they would look at me oddly, then usually find some way to go, and my self-esteem would get kicked in the head again.
But I was so excited about a line from a poem I read, or when I was a teenager cross-pollinating sweet williams to create different colors, or talking about the moisture retention of moss, which makes it good for putting in diapers. I am not joking, moss.
So I got angry. I thought the world was full of asses with airhead topics with zero meaning and zero impact on anything worthwhile. I wondered angrily what was wrong with the world that they didn’t talk about anything interesting. In my mind, they were unintelligent and wasting what mind they had, if they had one.
The combination of my attitude and my lack of party skills let me to avoid people, which was easy since people weren’t running to embrace me as a friend. If they had wanted me as a friend, I wouldn’t have figured that out. My children used to tell me when a neighbor wanted to know me.
Isn’t that odd though–my children arranging play dates for their mother?
But, I changed. All people were not stupid a-holes; most were very nice actually. The not nice people, well, I had to learn the hard way. I gradually started to learn social skills.
My big break came when I met hubby. He is social, and I have never met a person who doesn’t like him because he’s such a good guy. This meant that I was around other people. He never forced me to socialize, but he gave me gentle prodding, and told me that people like me. I found that hard to believe.
That leads us to self esteem.
I had to believe that some people do like me–eccentric and all. I practiced whatever social skills I had learned, and had fodder for new skills to file away in my brain. Hm, where is that stored in the brain? Yes, I still wander off in my own mind when the input and super vigilance become too much.
Then I can go home and hide.
