I'm not good at... being part of a community, is perhaps the best phrasing for it.
I don't mean to sound fatalist about it, like it isn't a skill one can learn. And I know I'm young, and missing a lot of requisite life experience still. And of course one should be permitted to leave and come back as other life demands allow, and I know any of my circles would welcome anyone back with open gentle arms.
But I've never really done the coming back part. It's like starting over, but I'm not coming in with a quiet curiosity, reasonably certain any fresh blood is happily seen. I'm coming back with shoulders hunched, sheepish and guilty for having been gone and having neglected the people there or "the community" in general. And the community in question isn't quite the place I drifted away from (because the one constant in life is change) and it's not what I was expecting (as opposed to a newbie with no formed expectations). But it's still familiar enough to create dissonance, like I'm a square peg finding my intended/previous slot has been sanded round, rattling around both too closed-in and not close enough, not close like before.
And all this is a me problem, I know. I can't expect places to wait on me (and I'd feel guiltier if they did!) and I should approach coming back like being a complete newbie again. No expectations, drop all the baggage I'm dragging along behind me.
But I'm not a newbie, am I? There are people who know me, some small (or large) part of me, who may have wanted me to stay, or at least know how flaky I can be, how fickle my attention.
And goddess, that's so fucking embarrassing.
Why would they want me back?
(And yes, I can already hear your voices, telling me to stop making myself so small and believe that I still have something to offer, and that I don't necessarily have to be "productive" to be liked or part of a community, that my presence does have inherent worth. I'm just trying to get that to sink into my brain, in more than just knowing and hearing the argument in my head, though I know that's a step.)
And, well, after all this rambling and thinking and figurative navel-gazing, I'm still where I started: standing in front of the first blind step.
