As you enter the building, your brain instantly receives all the sensory input at once; the smell of the wood floor, the lighting, the low roar of voices nearby, how tall the doorway is...
Stop. You try to banish all unnecessary thoughts because the most important thing is to respond correctly to the person greeting you. You smile, and wonder if your smile was genuine. Hopefully it was. Your hostess is chattering about the length of time it has been since she’s seen you, about things she has been doing to prepare for today, and all sorts of ordinary conversation, and you pay attention and tentatively try to respond.
You try asking a question about her day; that’s an acceptable thing to ask, right? She doesn’t hear you and keeps talking to the person beside you. You feel like an idiot, smiling and trying to get a word in edgewise, apparently inaudibly. Controlling the volume of your voice to be not too loud or soft is a skill that you don’t have, as is feeling out the appropriate timing for speaking up. Well, you tried...perhaps it’s better not to?
Your eyes begin darting everywhere, trying to take in the whole scene at once. How many people are here yet? Is it a loud and fun atmosphere or quiet and respectful? Where is the safest place in the room you should position yourself? Is there someone you should greet right away, or someone you know better than the others?
You get distracted by a shiny decoration hanging from the ceiling. Is that home made? Could you make it yourself? You study the way the sunlight reflects onto it through the window.
Someone bumps into you. Seriously, are you invisible as well as inaudible? You question your own existence...again.
You realize you were standing in the main walkway where people had been going back and forth finishing up their preparations. You make a mental note to keep a sharp lookout for main walkways in the future and avoid them.
The person was carrying a tray of chex mix and some of it spilled on the floor. You apologize profusely and they are nice about it but you still feel like you have made a momentous mistake.
Wanting to be useful, you reach down to pick up some of it, but only succeed in whacking their hand with yours as they pick it all up, so you awkwardly stand up again. Great. You can’t even be any help to anyone.
There are more people here now. They are arriving too quickly for you to process who they all are and what your relationship to them should be. It’s overwhelming, but you remind yourself they won’t care. They don’t really see you and you are alright with it staying that way until you can collect your sense.
You want to go home.
No! You don’t want to go home; this is the closest thing you have to a social life right now even though it is a challenge. This realization brings tears to your eyes. No. You can’t be emotional in the middle of a party. Water. If you just drink some water it will soothe the lump in your throat. There are people getting drinks at a drinks table so it must be an okay time.
You head to the table and see there is lemonade. They did the thing where you pour several cups ahead of time and set them on the table really close together. Okay, you can do this. Concentrate. You reach forward and take hold of what appears to be the safest cup. Almost got it.
Seriously? Your hand jerks as if with a will of it’s own and knocks into another cup, splashing some lemonade (pink lemonade, of course) onto the white tablecloth. There has got to be such a thing as bad luck. How else could you have spilled two things in ten minutes?
Later, you find yourself standing against the wall. You recall how many times in your life you have heard the joke about holding up the wall. You plan out how if someone says it this time, you will have a witty response ready. Maybe it would make them laugh and they would not walk away, and it might start a conversation.
You realize you’re standing still as a statue. You can’t do that-you check your phone and reply to a text message from a long-distance friend. Unfortunately the person who wants to talk to you is far away and not here with you now. If you would just stop thinking about yourself. Is there someone you can be a help to? Someone who needs you to listen to them? A job you can do for someone?
You look around at all the different groups interacting, you wonder if you’re being anti-social, but somehow it looks overwhelming to just walk up to one of them. When you do try that, people seem to guess you don’t know what you’re doing. You watch as other people go up and interrupt each other, circulate throughout the room and seem completely at ease. You have never known what that would be like.
Someone walks by you, appearing to be unattached to any groups or conversations. They stand still and survey the room for a few seconds as if undecided, and then they turn and see you looking at them, so you go ahead and say something random to them. Surprisingly, they actually talk to you, and even get you talking.
You try to keep your sentences very short so the person does not feel bored and want to escape. The things you’re saying mean nothing to you, but they are like keys that unlock the person, who turns toward you and exhibits body language that says that they are willing to stand there with you instead of escape. This boosts your confidence so that you relax, and you and the other person start to talk about other things that you both relate to.
Finally, someone is exuding energy that you can pick up on. Maybe your spirits are kindred, or on the same wavelength or something. Not that you’re jumping to an assumption, of course. You don’t want to come across desperate for friends and over-enthusiastically grab onto them.
As you make attempts to converse, they respond heartily and smile and you talk back and forth. This person is not walking away or looking at you as if you were from outer space. You try not to show your exhilaration at the fact that you are actually participating in a conversation.
Unfortunately, someone comes up and tries to physically pull them away. Why don’t they even try to resist? They must want to be pulled away. Someone is announcing a group game. That could be fun. Group games require interaction and bring people together. They ask you if you want to play charades. Charades?? “No!”
Why did you have to be so adamant? They were being kind to ask you. All you ever do is push people away. But you can’t play charades; your whole life is made up of trying to over-think your body language to portray what you want it to; how can you do it with a group of people all watching and analyzing you without completely passing out?
“We need more people,” they say, trying to pull on your arm now. No, please let go...you don’t want to go into defense mode...
“Well,” you hesitate.
“Come ON!” they complain and look at you as if they were completely disappointed in you. Then they go and join the group. Would you have ventured to try the game if they had urged you a little more? You’re not sure. Your brain seems to be freezing...you’re confused...about something. It is because the noise level has just risen greatly. The group seems to be arguing about whose team everyone is going to be on in charades.
No. Don’t freeze up. You can adjust to the noise. Take a deep breath. When you finally “un-freeze”, you realize you’re standing in the main walkway again. Don’t want to do that. You edge away to a table, turn a chair around facing away from it to sit down and watch the people playing the game.
“That’s a pretty loud game, isn’t it?” remarks an older middle-aged adult at the other end of the table. “I don’t play games like that anymore. I’m like you, I just like to sit and watch.”
Great. One of the oldest people here relates to you. Did you skip being a carefree young person? You HAVE been called an “old soul” before...
You and the older person make conversation for a little while. Eventually, you realize your mind has gone blank and you literally can’t think of anything else to say, so the person just good-naturedly smiles and placidly watches the game.
The only thing you want in the world right now is to be normal. You watch the people in the group game...the couples absorbed only in each other, the couples who pretend not to be or don’t know they are a couple yet. The best friends who will literally do or say anything to each other because they know they can, and they won’t give each other weird looks. If they do they quickly say they are just kidding and hug each other. The natural leader, whom everyone automatically looks to without realizing they are the followers.
Someone has been tugging on your arm. Apparently the people you were here with were ready to leave and you hadn’t realized. Should you be saying goodbye? The hostess is disappearing into another room and you don’t have time to go chase her down...would that be creepy, anyway? Probably would come across that way, with your level of intensity.
Maybe you could say goodbye to the person you sort of had a conversation with, so they get the feeling you appreciated it and would talk to them more in the future. You locate them across the room laughing and practicing a complicated handshake with a few other people.
Why can’t you learn those? How does one even begin an activity like that? Hello, do you want to learn a special handshake? There was a time in your life when you tried random topics like that as a form of social interaction. But all you got was those alien looks so you stopped trying.
You bravely go over to the person and say their name. They don’t hear, so you say it again, so loud that you know you definitely yelled it this time. It’s just that the noise level has risen so much that you can’t physically compete with it. However, a few people did hear you and look at you rather surprised as if they thought you were angry or maybe an evil witch or something. That’s how you must have unintentionally come across. One person asks you what’s wrong.
You quickly backtrack, valiantly trying to laugh and relax your face. Everything is fine, you explain, you had just been trying to get this person’s attention to say goodbye. So they get their attention for you and loudly tell them what you just said. The person’s eyes widen and they apologize for not hearing you while you try to tell them it’s fine and just stumble over your words as they give you a quick hug. The group of people around raise one eyebrow as if wondering why saying goodbye needed to be such a big deal and interrupt their game, but somehow you don’t care anymore.
On the way home you silently look out the car window. Maybe in the future you just won’t walk up to a group. Maybe in the future you shouldn’t bother speaking until being spoken to. Maybe, you contemplate, as you study the stars outside the window, you should just stay home.
***
This is something I was "inspired" to write, in that it happened rather quickly. :) It's a hypothetical situation, but every bit is directly from my own experience. I think the goal in letting people read this is so they can not only relate (everyone has these thoughts and experiences to some degree) but also get an awareness of just how much analyzing and exhausting intensity is happening in the brain all at once. I can only hope I did a satisfactory job.
