Social Awareness

A friend of mine recently mentioned that she has two very close friends whom she met at different times in her life. They each know a completely different side of her, and yet, they both like her anyway. Would they still like her if they knew the other side?

I become a different form of myself depending on whom I’m around. I think everyone does it, to some extent. I think that part of why we alter our behavior based on the company we keep has to do with expectations from others. If you’re the “funny” one in the group, maybe you go out of your way to keep that title, as though you’ll somehow fail if you don’t live up to it. It's too much pressure trying to be "the sweet girl", "the funny girl", "the smart girl", "the cute girl", and "the quirky girl" simultaneously. I am different things to different people, and it is simply not possible for all of them to be visible at once. They're all a part of me, but I have to juggle them. Otherwise, I won't know who I am anymore.


Or if you have a label you dislike, such as the one who is undependable, maybe you fight against it with every thread of your consciousness.

I have, in the past, dealt with some labels I didn’t love. At one point, I was known as the one who was always late, which was a title I rightly deserved when it was assigned to me. I worked hard to become more punctual and reliable, but the label stuck. In fact, people continued to mention it because they found it amusing that I became irritated (I’ve already mentioned that I don’t react well to teasing).

I also had one stigma attached to me that I never really understood. For whatever reason, someone decided that I had a habit of exaggerating, and everyone else seemed to go along with it. I don’t believe that I exaggerate any more than anyone else does. Nonetheless, that was one label that I couldn’t shake. How can you prove that you’re not habitually embellishing things? People stopped taking anything I said seriously. I felt like Cassandra, the Greek prophetess of doom whose curse from the Gods was that no one ever believed her, no matter how adamant she was that what she said was the truth. It was an incredibly frustrating thing for me to deal with.

I was once brought into a group of people because I had one close friend in the bunch. One day, they were all discussing which character from the television show Friends each of them most closely resembled personality-wise. They determined that the person who was my link to the clique was their Chandler. And then I overheard one of them whisper that I must be Janice, because everyone hated me except Chandler (If you're not familiar with Friends, Janice was an extremely annoying and grating minor character, and the comparison is in no way flattering).

That was painful. I always want people to like me. I never wanted to be popular in high school, but I did want to be well-liked. I still do. I have this unfortunate need to make a good impression on people. Maybe that’s why I’m such a chameleon in social situations. I always want to be whatever it is that I think other people will like the most.

See, this is part of why I hate dealing with large groups of people. I never know how to handle myself. I’m not sure what behavior is most acceptable. It’s exponentially worse when people I barely know surround me. I end up silently sitting in the corner, sipping a cherry coke, and observing the group dynamic. I rarely participate in group discussions in general, unless I am extraordinarily comfortable with the people around me, and therefore certain of my role within that social setting.

My social anxiety used to be far more suffocating than it is now. In high school, I once was planning to see a movie with a friend. He invited another person, whom at the time I was having difficulty getting along with. To retaliate, I called up a person that my friend had occasional troubles with and invited him along. It should also be noted that our two guests abhorred each other. So there we were, going to see this movie as an incredibly awkward foursome that had to be seated in a strategic order so that everyone would be comfortable and able to avoid conflict. Here’s what I hadn’t foreseen: each of our guests invited guests so that they would feel more comfortable. And then these new tagalongs invited others as well. By the time I got to the movie complex, our twosome-turned-foursome had become a group of 23 people, unable to fit in the same row of the theater (and no, for the record, I am not exaggerating). Too many people. Too large of a group. I couldn’t process it. I couldn’t handle it. I began to hyperventilate. I called my parents from a pay phone to ask them to pick me up and take me home. They didn’t answer. I felt trapped.

Later that year, I was invited to the first of what has now become an annual party known as Thanzgivin’. I was too afraid to go. My friend Annie showed up at my house and said that she was going to the party, and she wasn’t going without me. She and my parents spent about an hour convincing me that I wasn’t going to die. I spent part of that hour crying, I think. Somehow, they managed to talk me into it. Annie and I swung by Boston Market, and walked into the party incredibly late. But we made it. And I survived it. Since then, Annie and I have had a tradition of showing up to Thanzgivin’ together, and always fashionably late. (It just occurred to me that, as my parents now live in another state, I might not be able to attend Thanzgivin’ this year. Calamity! How sad I shall be. It’s sort of a reunion for me, now. A remembrance of the day I took control).

It’s difficult to explain social anxiety to people who have never felt it. In my experience, it’s similar to claustrophobia. I feel powerless, frightened, and dizzy. It feels a bit like the world might cave in at any moment. And there’s too much stimulation. It’s impossible to process the input from it. It makes me want to scream at people to shut up, but I’m too scared to do anything. Sometimes, it helps to sit down, close my eyes, put my hands over my ears, and breath deeply for a bit. But more than anything, it just makes me want to run.

I don’t get to that point nearly as much as I used to. I’m still freaked out by going to Mass in large churches, and by studying in large libraries. Sometimes I feel it when I go to bars or parties. I’m glad it’s mostly gone. I’m going to attend a party this evening, and I’m not terrified. Always a good sign.

I prefer to deal with people in one-on-one or small group situations. This is, in part, due to how overwhelmed I get in large groups. But also, I’m better one-on-one. I never try to impress people. I don’t become self-conscious. I turn into me. Of course, it might be a different me for one person than for another, but it’s still a more honest form of me than you’ll get among a sea of people.

I have one other way of dealing with gatherings of people that I haven’t yet mentioned. On occasion, I let the side of me take over that I enjoy the most: Story-Mode. I love Story-Mode. Usually I only break it out when I’m in a room filled with my parents’ friends, relatives, or some other form of adults. I begin to recount recent events in my life, acting them out, doing impressions of all the people involved. I become the center of attention (which I crave… I like to think that I’m a natural-born performer). I am the entertainment for the evening. Everything that I say is apparently hilarious. I can do no wrong. It’s my one-woman show, filled with improvisation and hysterics. I’ve been doing it since I was in elementary school. The adults always got a kick out of seeing little 5-year-old me dancing around a room and explaining what I was learning at school in great detail. I always thought I’d grow out of it. I assumed that one day, they wouldn’t find it quite as cute. I was wrong. They love it. I go into it at every family gathering even today.

Few of my friends have ever seen me in this rare form. I only go into it under very specific conditions, and I have to be in the right mood with a lot of spare energy (generally it helps if I’m not taking my medication, a la Robin Williams). It’s also difficult to get into it when you’re surrounded by theatre people, as everyone wants to be the center of attention, and you end up fighting to be seen and heard (I don’t like to fight that fight. I’m comfortable resigning myself to a corner, as I said before). The other reason I don’t break it out often is that I worry that my friends will hate it, as it’s a side of me that they’ve never been previously introduced to. Will it change their opinion of me for the worse?

Logically, I know that this is unlikely. If anything, the people who have seen me in Story-Mode seem to enjoy me even more after witnessing it first-hand. I like to think that it’s because I am at my most delightful. I’m completely comfortable. I stop worrying about what people think of me, and I put myself on the table, heart and soul. I stop having social anxiety and start being a social butterfly.

The only other time that I am this free is when I’m dancing. I turn off the critic in my brain, and I just go with it. Anyone who won’t do that while dancing is missing out. It’s an astonishingly joyous experience once you give yourself over to it. I highly recommend it. And I also recommend going out dancing with me. I have a way of rubbing off on people and getting them into the groove in spite of themselves.

Actually, I’ve just now remembered that I have had a couple of friends who knew me in Story-Mode better than they did in other modes. I used to hang out with them in college whenever they needed a study break. After awhile, I felt as though I was their entertainment and they didn’t actually know me as a person. When I tried to be more serious around them, they kept urging me to go back to Story-Mode. I became pretty distant with them after that realization. It’s one thing to make your friends laugh. It’s quite another thing to be used by people as though you were some sort of court jester. I have no desire to revisit that. It’s demeaning. And it reminds me of being in elementary school, mixing the food to get the other kids to like me more. I hate that. (If you don’t know what I’m talking about, then you should really go back and read this blog from the beginning. It’s a very good place to start. And I’m terribly self-referential in my writing.)

Wow. Just now, as I am writing, I have started judging myself. I glanced over the last couple of paragraphs and decided that my writing is abominable. Is anyone still reading this? I actually deleted a whole paragraph because I deemed it too rotten to be shared (it was also on embarrassing subject matter, but that’s truly not why I deleted it. I think it should be plainly apparent by now that I am rather willing to share embarrassing details on the internet. Which is stupid of me. Anyone could be reading this. Well, let it be).

I sit in perpetual judgment of myself. I have the kind of writing that is probably only interesting to me (and not always, to be perfectly honest). I have the sort of body that looks better in clothes. I have the sort of face that needs makeup to seem balanced. I have the sort of thoughts that only make sense while they’re still in my head. I go through whole days when nothing I am seems quite good enough, and then I rinse and repeat. *sigh* Ah, well. I’m certainly not in Story-Mode now. I’m in Reflective-Mode. (I just made that one up on the spot, but it seems to apply… or perhaps Judgment-Mode?)

I wonder who I’ll be at the party tonight. Will I be the girl in the corner watching as life passes by? Will I be the dancer, ignoring everything but the music? Will I be the court jester, letting jokes and stories flow like water through a sieve? I hope I’m at least a little bit me.

May you live without fear, judgment, or labels.

Much love,

~A~