My struggles with being social

 I've often said that humans are social beings, it's important and indeed essential to the proper functioning of any human being. Human beings are meant to operate in "packs" or communities that can accomplish and achieve things much greater than the sum of their parts. 

So you'd think that I'd have gotten this thing figured out for myself and generally do good at this stuff...you'd think.

I've never been clinically diagnosed with any behavioral disorders or mental disorders therefore I feel like it'd be extremely unethical of me to assume I suffer from Social Anxiety Disorder or Asperger's Syndrome and after all, it's extremely easy to misdiagnose yourself, especially with the information overload that is the internet.

I find it difficult to talk to people, especially face to face. Of course, those close to me will probably doubt this because I'm at my most active socially when I'm with people that I'm comfortable with. It's extremely difficult for me to take those first few steps towards establishing any social relationship to the extent that I have to mentally "rehearse" my actions before I commit to doing them. 

This has also caused me to fall off significantly in communication and contact with people once the point of mutual interest is removed, it just seems much simpler to wait for the other to initiate which has led to me potentially losing many valuable and essential relationships with people around me. 

Eye contact in particular has always been something that I've struggled with. It reminds me of an incident back when I was in the 8th or 9th grade(I forget), where we had to go meet the school counselor for a mandatory counseling session. Halfway through the session, the counselor mentioned to me that I constantly avoided eye contact with her, I think I was more surprised than her when I realized that I was doing this subconsciously.

Once I do get into the flow of conversation with a person or when I sync with them, I enjoy the conversation a lot. Time is the function of my success with inter-personal relationships, the longer I talk with a person the more I start to take part in the conversation, and the more I've known the person, the easier it is for me to maintain eye contact with them. Unfortunately, the longer and the more frequent intervals are between these interactions, the faster I regress to my previous state. It isn't something I'm proud of and indeed has caused me many sleepless nights agonizing over every word I say.

Another thing I struggled with and still do to a great extent is talk and interact with girls. It's the strangest thing and is frustrating to deal with on a daily basis. Whenever I was present in a situation where I'd have to interact with the opposite sex it felt like my communication skills were a thousand times more stilted and uncomfortable, even though 95% of the time these people were extremely polite and even understanding considering that my usual response was just walking away after looking at them with wide eyes and stuttering a short response. Fortunately, with a lot of consistent effort, I've been able to make a great deal of progress on this front.

This was by far my most apparent and difficult part of anxiety to deal with. My body froze up whenever I was put in such a situation and unfortunately it is very easy to assume that such behavior is me being sexist in some manner or conceited when in reality, this has only caused me much shame in regards to how I was as a person.

It was and still is very easy to hate and abhor all my faults as a person and indeed I relied on my self-loathing to push me forward. The thing about all that self-loathe is that while it's great fuel for action, it's a fuel that runs on your dignity as a person and ends up making the underlying cause for self-hatred all that much stronger. 

I'm not the best at social situations and sometimes I'm not the best at conveying my emotions in the best ways indeed I have to thank all my friends and family for putting up with that, but I'm Aby, and no fault of mine is going to change that. I've grown to empathize with myself, be it me who made mistakes or the one who succeeded at what he did, I've grown to realise that, both are instrumental to the person that I am. 

I've tried to reach out further than I ever have previously, to make conversations, to try and understand what makes other people run the same mile I do.

I'm a work in progress but I can only hope that the wait is worth it.