Let’s Talk…

There’s so many topics that are considered taboo to talk about openly, things that you only discuss with your closest friends or family because you’re afraid you might offend someone or the fear of being labelled ignorant. I’m one of those people who shoots my mouth off about everything to anyone and it often lands me in trouble. That being said, I do that because I’d like to hear others’ opinions about certain topics as I like to see life from a different perspective. I’ve had an interesting conversation with someone recently, a Facebook friend and I realised that things I experience on a daily basis and accept as normal in my life, were not as normal as I thought it was.

Let’s start off with my absolute inability to have a need for human contact, and I’m not referring to haphephobia. I love being on my own, I interact with fellow human beings at work and social setups but if I could choose, I’d be a hermit, a recluse. It’s not that I don’t like people, it’s just the problems and issues that comes along with interacting with and letting people into your life are draining. My friendship with other human beings survives and thrive because we barely see each other but when I need you, or vice versa, I know you got my back. I often allow people in, only to be met by all the issues I’ve tried to avoid. I’m not rude, most people perceive me as friendly and would randomly walk up to me to have a conversation. I don’t have issues with that but often the conversation become monotonous, which is partly my fault as I tend to zone out a lot, and I’d be too polite to stop it so it goes on and on and on and I’d need an entire weekend in my own company to regroup afterwards.

I’m a overthinker and I’m seriously considering meditation, hypnosis, well anything that can assist in combatting that. I’m unable to relax, that’s a foreign feeling to me. I often visit the spa to “try” to relax, to no avail. Something as relaxing as a bubble bath with candle lights sends my mind into overdrive. I’d sit in there, thinking about relaxing but not actually relaxing. I also suffer from social anxiety disorder where I tend to envision social scenarios in advance, like I’d get invited to an event and I’d be thinking about how it will go down, what I’d be wearing, how I’d interact with people, what I’d be saying, how I’d be making a fool of myself etc. It psych me out so much that I often end up not leaving my house. It’s ironic that I’m in the media industry, as someone pointed out, because that usually involves events, interacting with others, etc. Surprisingly I’ve managed to control it in recent years as I always thought I felt that way because I’m an introvert and I’m extremely shy, which most people don’t know about me. I’ve created a persona that helps me cope with that, I overcame my shyness because I had to and moved on from there.

I almost had a panic attack once at a women’s day conference because, wait for it, there were so many women! I mean, I expected it but seeing about 400+ females in one venue scared me. I’ve always been friends with mostly guys because, as cliché as it may sound, it’s less drama. It also had a lot to do with the fact that most of my cousins I saw on a regular basis were boys and so was my neighbour. I used to play rugby, soccer, cricket or whatever they were playing with them. It comes through in my life right now because I’m really chilled and most people assume I’m lesbian (not sure when chilled started equaling being a lesbian but yeah)I don’t have issues with lesbians, one of my best friends are lesbian (see what I did there?) My point being, I’m so over being affected by what people think of or say about me as I’ve worried about that most of my life. I’ve tried so hard to conform until I realised how unhappy I became because of that.

In retrospect this post started out as a conversation on Facebook and I thought it would remain that. I don’t know why I decided to post it on the blog, I guess I wanted you, as my readers, to know a little bit more about me. Let me know if you can even remotely relate to anything I’ve written in this post, it will make me feel less weird but if you don’t, do share your quirks. I’d love to hear from you.