I Do Not Know What To Say To You

Christmas tree farm, Amity, OR

When I’m in the mood to write blog stuff, I think of one of two questions: What do I love? and What brings me pain? (Almost no one reads the love ones.) I thumb through the file cabinets in my brain to see what I’m been chewing on, and eventually I’ll come up with something.

I think it’s important to write about this particular subject because I am still in the middle of it.  I am still in the suffering stage and there is no bright light on the horizon.  Most of the time, these little personal essays are mini-survival stories or thoughts on fiction and football and nerd stuff. This time, I am currently mired in the muck.  Whenever I talk to a therapist again, this will be at the top of my list.  Just as it was five years ago when I started taking care of myself. Haven’t been able to do jack about it.

I want to meet people.  I want to socialize.  I want a new friend before I die.

Kurt Vonnegut explained why there were so many divorces in the last half of the last century. Americans are in a process of isolating themselves. Simply put, each person in a marriage is just one person.  We are wired to be in a community.  One that starts with our partners, family, and kids and then extends to others.  I can be very happy with my wife and my marriage and my children, as well as the small group of friends I’ve kept in touch with for 20 years or so, but my problem exists outside of that.

They used to call people like me shy.  I get it. It’s easy to pin down. The obvious answer is I don’t know the right thing to say or I don’t have a lot of experience being social.  Make sense.  I just don’t think that’s my problem.  The truth is, I don’t have the experience and I don’t know what to say, but there is a lot of crap other than simple social maneuvering and chatting techniques.

Now, I’ve met people through many workplace scenarios. I have had conversations and workplace camaraderie to be sure.  I think I fair rather well.  It’s that next level that I’ve never reached. It’s the doing things after work hours or on the weekends type of stuff I’ve never done.  I don’t know who I am out there.  On the job, I’m valued as someone who helps you get through a shit day.  Out there, where all those rules don’t apply, I don’t know who I am or what I would say. 

It’s not just work.  I have lived in this house for nearly eight years and I don’t know any of my neighbors.  Not even their names.  My last house I lived in for nine years and I knew only first names of two neighbors, and they initiated it.  I don’t know how to talk to grocery clerks.  Waitresses.  Assholes at the music store.  Even if I am feeling extroverted and wacky and I manage to talk back to someone who is being friendly, my mind analyzes if this person is a potential friend or not.  I feel myself getting emotional; then eventually bummed out that it’s just a random exchange and not the beginning of buds for life.

I think I speak softly, too. When some guy at the store says: “Go Hawks!” when he sees my Seahawks t-shirt, I reply “That’s right!”  But I think I say it in such a whispered tone that the guy thinks I’ve ignored him.  People seem to not see me a lot.  I get bumped into. 

My therapist though it was weird that I could do open mics but I didn’t know what to say to one person.  People are terrified of going on stage for any reason, but that’s nothing.  Face to face with a stranger, having a conversation, where you can read their emotions and body language, and they’re reading yours and having the same thoughts in their heads? Give me stand-up anytime. 

If I were more spiritual, I would say that I am blessed.  I have love in my life; I am embracing my health and my health problems.  I am fine with being 42.  But this complete void in my life, the excitement of new people and conversations and experiences, is unavoidable.  My wife has the same void, but she does not feel it like I do.  It doesn’t bother her.  I am the one who has to extend his hand and make this happen.  I am the one who has to hide his obvious desperation to make friends.

Pure incompetence would be preferable to being dumbfounded.  I’d rather be a boorish douche or a chatty hipster than just an empty suit that doesn’t say anything.  At least I’d have something to work with.  Shit man, I know I’m funny.  I’m smart enough to understand an intellectual discussion and nerdy enough to get quirky references.  I’m opinionated.  I have a lot of things to say.  All that simply rattling around in my brain is meaningless.   Without the proper entrance into someone else’s personal space, I’m like a street preacher or creepy old man.

I usually like to have a few sentences to wrap things up at the end.  Without them, these essays feel unfinished.  But, I truly have nothing to tie this together.  I do not know how to tackle this problem and I have no potential strategies.  It is a huge issue with tiny little everyday solutions.  I guess it is truthful to say that I am hopeful and that I am sure there is a way out of this for me.  I just have to walk through the right door.