Growing Tiny

When I was venturing off into adulthood from my teenaged years and honing my grown-up social skills, the cool, high-tech app of the day was AOL. It may have been slow. It may have been busy signals for hours when the service went unlimited, but it was what we had, and enabled us to connect in new ways with new people from new places. It brought more people into the world of IRC and BBS that I had played in through high school. Suddenly, I could find people who really did “get me.” No more did I need to experience the failure of trying to find friends like me locally. The internet offered real camaraderie on a deeper level than people I knew in real life who were cool people, but didn’t really have anything in common with me. 

All these years later (do the math yourself - lol) I have come to a realization. The internet broke me. It made me completely socially inept. Speaking to an unknown person face to face is among the most terrifying experiences I can imagine. Not because I’m terribly shy. I love to talk - once I know you. That fear has made getting over the initial hump mostly impossible for me in life. Online, I don’t have that fear. I socially developed on IRC, in AOL chat, and Usenet. I can freely talk to strangers online as though we are old friends. But if I encountered any of those strangers in queue at Target, I wouldn’t even consider saying a word. 

This is one thing about me I most wish I could change. I don’t know how to change it because I don’t know how to overcome the fear. The older I get, the more maddening it becomes to have but one other soul on earth which you consider an absolute friend, forsaking all others. I mean, I love her to death and would walk to the ends of the Earth for her, but only if I didn’t have to talk to someone alone when I get there.

To make matters worse, I love getting to know people, learning about them, understanding why they are who they are. Honestly, meeting a kindred spirit and getting to know them and falling in love with them is what appeals to me about polyamory more than anything else. I love that experience. I long for my little tribe. I long to have friends. I’m just so overcome with dread when it comes to making them. Is it fair to blame early immersion in the internet for my woes, or am I simply making it a scape goat to rationalize some other character flaw or disorder? 

I need to turn these thoughts over for a spell.

tl;dr: I don’t care if you read it or not.