the older i get the more i comfortable i get with my own style or lack thereof but at one point it seemed painfully clear that i talk less than everyone. i mean i am always always the quietest one in the room watching what everyone else is doing and marveling that they are able to do it. at one point i saw that everyone except me was conversing with someone else if not a couple of someones and that i knew at least one person in each conversational group and could probably have insinuated myself into whichever conversation i chose but i didn't feel comfortable insinuating myself into any of them. i watched how other people fell naturally to conversing with other people and i thought how do they do that i don't understand.
i mean i really and truly don't get this in a fundamental way and i don't see how it is that i am of the same species as these other folks who talk to each other spontaneously and with relish. i mean we have parties right because we like to stand around in crowded rooms right and talk to each other we get pleasure out of it or we wouldn't do it all on our own the way we do.
maybe it is just that they all knew each other a little better than i knew any of them.
well either way i don't really feel bad about it and that is the more comfortable part but on the other hand i really wonder how it is i am supposed to blend in and function with this sort of really bizarre to me practice of being social.
and of course i saw someone there whom i miss a lot and our eyes met a couple of times and i don't know if i read something there but what is startling is that i wanted to read something there which is different and relatively new in that at one time i would have recognized the urge to strike out and meet this person but this time it felt like something alien to me.
and i think to myself what happened what happened and how did i lose those four years. let me warn you young people you never know really what you are capable of until you do it and then it is too late you have done it and you have to live with the consequences even if this means not recognizing yourself for some months.
oddly i am glad i went to the party.