a roll call for the social and anxious

Here's an anecdote for you:

I went to Sephora the other day to pick up a gift for a friend. It was her birthday and I hadn't seen her in a while, so I wanted to take some time to buy her something nice.

I arrived, I strode confidently in, and then a tremendously blonde lady came up to me with a big Can-I-Help-You smile. She said her catchphrase.

At the time, yeah. I actually did need her help. I actually did need to say, "Yeah, hi, I'm here to get a present for a friend. I don't really know what she'll like, but I know she likes to paint her nails, and she's also getting interested in eyeshadow. Do you have anything to recommend?"

It's so easy in writing, isn't it?

Instead, I just looked at her and stammered something along the lines of, "Oh, no, I'm okay, thanks," and then walked back out. I stood in front of Sephora for a while, because the lady was still there, and I couldn't very well just walk back in after I'd told her I was okay. I sat on a bench and stared at the entrance. I'm pretty sure there were at least two shoppers who walked past me and then looked back with a concerned expression.

Eventually (like two hours later), the lady was gone. She'd gone off her shift, she was in another part of the store, whatever. I'd been toasting in the hot sun, and with a bit of relief, I went inside.

No one assaulted me this time, so I weaved my way through the aisles. The good thing about being a teenage girl in Sephora browsing through the sections is that everyone thinks you're there to window shop. Everyone knows you can't afford any of the things in there, and that you're just looking through with curiosity. Sampling, spraying, swatching - you know the drill.

So no one talked to me, and I very comfortably went to the nail section, found two great colors, and went to stand in line at the cash register.

Three, two, one person left before my turn.

And then I left the line.

I left the line, much to the intrigued delight of the shopper behind me, and then I took the polishes and hid them in an obscure section of the perfume aisle. I made sure no one could see them behind Burberry's brown bottles, and then I left the store.

When I got back to the car, I asked my mom to go buy the polishes. She stared at me in outrage. "What have you been doing all this time?"

"I left my wallet in my room. Sorry. I'm really sorry. Can you please go get it? I hid them behind the Burberry perfume bottles at the perfume aisle."

I got a stern lecture about irresponsibility and how it was affecting people around me, and not just myself.

Haha. If only she knew, right?

I know this anecdote just sounds like a pretty horrible incident of a fail, of those giggly awkward moments that you tell to a friend later on in the month, but stuff like this has been happening pretty frequently.

Not being able to go get a cup of tea at a bookstore cafe because I don't want to do that fumbly thing with my wallet, walking out of a store because the cashier looks horribly irritated, thinking constantly about whether or not people are looking at the worst parts of my facial acne while talking to me...thinking, thinking, and eventually, freaking out.

With the latest trends in pop culture tending towards popularizing the geeky teen, the one who's uncomfortably awkward and says weird things at the wrong time, with the latest catch phrase being "awkward," it's easy to sort of assimilate these tendencies into the behavior of everyone else.

Let me tell you something. Being socially anxious really sucks. You literally cannot function around normal people. Your brain sort of haywires and eventually, you start thinking your responses in your head. Everything you're supposed to say, you think, and then you negate it because it's too mean, it's too dumb, it's too stupid to even mention aloud.

So you don't. And then you lose your voice. And then you become invisible.

If you believe you're socially anxious, because of your appearance or your behavior or your attitude, here's the voice in your head:

NO ONE CARES. AND EVERYONE FEELS JUST AS STUPID AS YOU DO.

It's an annoying voice that barrages you about the irrationality about your behavior. It sucks, but you know, sometimes, the voice is worth listening to.

I mean, do you feel conscious being nude at a nudist colony? Yeah, probably. But you have to realize that hey, you have a really cool new superpower. You are literally almost invisible. So everyone else is feeling too self-conscious about their own bodies to care whether or not you're fat or skinny or pretty or what not. You're just the same as them - nude.

I also feel like empathy sometimes helps. Put yourself in their position, or better yet, think about when you have ever been in their position. If you see a jogger running past your car, what do you think?

"Ew, why are they running in daylight?"

No.

"..."

That's probably more accurate. You think nothing. It's just a jogger. You have better things to worry about.

You are just as forgettable. And that is a good thing, because that means there is no reason for you to feel like every eye is on you. I know it sucks to feel the way you do when you walk into a classroom late and every student turns around to look at you. I know. (Read the anecdote above.)

There's not really much of a moral for this post. I just wanted to let you know...yeah. It sucks to be socially anxious. It feels irrational and crippling...but it is a problem we have to work at. We have to see that this isn't the end-all. I like to think of it like the plunge off of a rollercoaster...gritting your teeth and just letting yourself burst out into a conversation, a raised hand in class, a confident smile at the cashier.

And remember, no one cares.