Social Anxiety. A have a sister who I swear doesn’t suffer from it. I know lots of politicians and journalists who lack it.
Sarah Palin doesn’t have a smidgen:
She outrages us because she lacks social anxiety. Bless her boots. Don’t be standing on the dogs Sarah.
But most of the rest of us have experienced this condition at one time or another.
I’m relieved I’m over it for the most part.
I’m told as a young child I was shy. At elementary school I had lots of friends. The first time I experienced social anxiety was when moving schools during my middle school years. We relocated and that entire car journey I spent my time thinking:
“Will they like me will they like me will they like me”?
Ah. Middle School Anxiety. Think how many friends I made at my new school radiating that low level paranoia!
One! She ditched me after three weeks when her best friend came back from vay cay. She was kind enough to inform me why she was dropping me:
“So and so is back from Australia now. So we’re not going to hang out any more, kay”?
What choice did I have? I took refuge in the entire works of Daphne Du Maurier and Jane Austin and it was fine, really.
I was always kind of a Breakfast Club type of student right through my High School years. Whether we were geeks, jocks or cheerleaders, we all ended up matey in year 13. We all suffered and looking back it was a necessary process to navigate the politics of adult life.
Then I met my husband in college and everything was awesome from then on right?Â
No! Fuck no! Shortly after I met future hubby we dropped out of college. We spent some months couch surfing at our respective parents houses. Then we decided to haul our raggedy asses back to college for a second attempt. My 16 year old brother moved in with us and we all underwent a collective angst.
This was Dunedin, New Zealand in the 1990’s. It was settled by the Scottish.
The Glasgow of the Southern Hemisphere.
An awesome place to be unless you’re in a dark place, right? We moved into a condominium sandwiched in between a halfway house and a guy dealing smack. We kept away from both. We knew not to get too experimental. We were having enough trouble keeping a grip on reality as it was.
The 20 year old brain is extremely plastic. Unless you’re distracted by work or are intensely involved in your studies, it can be a perpetual state of Manic Depression. When we were up we were up. When we were down we would sit around in a group rocking; wondering when it would all stop, please. With someone in the condo below us playing Alanis Morrisette at full volume.
We moved out, we moved on. We grew up. We got jobs.
Hang in there it gets better!
Enlightened Housewife. Asking the hard questions since 2001. Except when I was pregnant and my brain was mush.
