| Aug112007 | I wouldn’t say |
“I wouldn’t say you’re shy. You’re more… reserved.”
I’ve been telling everyone that I’m shy. They’re all sort of incredulous about it, “You? Shy? Nah, you seem pretty friendly to me.”
But here I am with the phone that never rings and a pessimistic outlook about forming any sort of meaningful friendships here. I beat myself up over the fact that I haven’t made more friends by now. It’s been 6 months. Things are better than they were 3 months ago and they’ll probably be better 3 months from now but I wish I didn’t need to feel crap about it.
Actually, I think I’ve already written a blog post like this.
Reserved is a good way to describe me, now that I think about it. I save certain parts of myself. I save the dirty jokes for these kinds of people. I save the political opinions for another group. I save a certain smile for a certain time of day. The end result is that I’m guarded. I’ll laugh politely at your joke but you’ll never hear my retort; I’ll carefully consider your opinion but you won’t hear mine. I’m so wound up trying to craft an appropriate response and deep down I still haven’t realized that my default response of silence is probably the worst response of all.
What’s significant is that I don’t blame this city. I’m aware of my squandered potential and I believe if I were in Melbourne trying to make friends, I’d be stuck in the same rut. I can’t very well start badmouthing Seattle until I’ve exhausted at least a few avenues.
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