I’m not the most social creature. I’m like a cryptid. Sightings of me in the wild are rare and to be treasured, sometimes worthy of being caught on film.
When I do make these rare excursions into the social sphere, I prefer to go with others. Also like a cryptid, I’m weird and awkward around humans. Having a friend or a group of friends makes that awkwardness and weirdness less noticeable. It also makes it easier for me to be in a social situation. Having someone else or a group of someone elses with me acts as sort of a buffer from the anxiety of being in a social situation. They are the lubricant that greases the wheels of my social interactions, as it were.
Sometimes, though, I have to fly solo. Or maybe just arrive solo with the intent of meeting up with my lubricants and buffers. But either/or, I’m never really solo. My anxiety is always with me.
Here’s the thing: Alone or with friends, if I’m out and about in a social situation, I never feel like I belong. I always feel awkward and I feel like that awkwardness is apparent. I feel like the people I’m interacting with -even friends I’ve known for decades- can plainly see that I’m poorly cosplaying as a functioning human being. Now, with the friends I’ve known for ages, I eventually relax and even though my anxiety never goes away and I will absolutely rake myself over the coals later about everything I’ve said and done, my anxiety at least relaxes with me for that moment. But, if I’m with people I’m less comfortable with because maybe I haven’t known them as long or I don’t hang out with them as much, or I’m flying solo and forced to be in the midst of people I barely know or don’t know at all, I never relax and neither does my anxiety. I spend the entire time in performance mode, and that my friends, is exhausting.
In theory, the more that I socialize, the more comfortable my anxiety could become with the whole act of socializing. The more my anxiety and I feel comfortable with socializing, the more we’ll feel like we belong in those situations and with those people.
In practice, however…well, I don’t know how it works out in practice because I struggle with getting past my basic cryptid nature and ingrained social anxiety to actually put this into practice. The idea of making myself more available to hang out with people seems like guaranteed rejection because who would want to voluntarily hangout with an anxiety-ridden cryptid? Sure, I would, but that’s because cryptids of a feather. Or another more fitting cryptid feature. I guess it depends on the cryptid. My point is that it’s a pretty big ask to associate with me in a public, social situation and not everyone is up for that and I don’t blame them.
Yes, I know that could just be my anxiety talking, but it could also be true.
In conclusion, this is one of those things that I’m going to spend my existence working on. Maybe one day the practice will finally prove the theory. In the meantime, enjoy the cryptid sightings.
You may have noticed that the latest release on the site hasn’t changed in a while. A little over five years, actually. I had this realization late one night while my brain was doing its mental gymnastics before it finally shut up and let me sleep.
It’s Leap Day and since February is extended by one day, let’s do another little bit of a flash fiction.
Love at 350° by Lisa Peers- On the very mild end of the spice scale, we have love during a TV baking contest. Tori Moore is a high school chemistry teacher with dreams of opening her own bakery. With an empty nest looming, her twins get her an audition on American Bake-o-Rama, where she meets Kendra Campbell, the notoriously tough judge, who’s going through her own life upheaval. It takes no time for the two of them to develop heart eyes for each other, but there’s a clause in the contract about fraternizing that would cost them both dearly. 
Mistakes Were Made by Meryl Wilsner- And on the absolute other end of the spice spectrum, we have a May-December romance with one big complication. Cassie Klein uses Family Weekend at college to go off-campus and ends up landing a very hot one-night stand with an older woman…who turns out to be the mom of one of her best friends at school. Oops! Erin Bennett wasn’t meaning to hook-up with a college student when she went to visit her daughter at school and she definitely didn’t mean for it to be her daughter’s friend.
If you read the blog post title, you might be thinking, “Whoa, that’s pretty extreme.”
Remember when everyone started calling the stretchmarks gained in pregnancy “tiger stripes”? It was done in an effort to make child bearing folks feel better about the changes their body underwent while they were growing and birthing an entire human being. As a collective, we decided to change a flaw to a badge of honor. As well we should. Growing and birthing a person is kind of a big deal.
Deadhouse: Life in a Coroner’s Office by John Temple- The book follows three deputy coroners -Ed Strimlan, Mike Chichwak, and Tiffani Hunt- working in a coroner’s office in Pittsburgh. We get to know them, their work, their coworkers, some history of both the field and the area they work, and of course, some grisly details about the cases they investigate -and all the hang-ups that come along with investigating, like the sights, the smells, and the politics. 
Smoke Gets In Your Eyes & Other Lessons From the Crematory by Caitlin Doughty- As a twenty-something with a degree in medieval history and flair for the morbid, Caitlin Doughty took a job in a crematory and quickly found herself pursuing her life’s work. The book provides explanations of the cremation practice, some history involving how people lay their dead to rest, and answers questions you didn’t know you needed the answers to, like how many bodies can you fit in a Dodge van and how do you get cremains out of your clothes?
Over My Dead Body: Unearthing the Hidden Histories of America’s Cemeteries by Greg Melville- Working in his hometown cemetery in college led Greg Melville to ponder the rich history of America’s burial grounds. He visited several for the book, including Arlington, Hollywood Forever, Boothill Cemetery, Colonial Jewish Burial Ground, Central Park, and Chapel of the Chimes. Each place of eternal rest exhumed more and more of our country’s history and the final resting places of our dead.
For better or worse, I have once again completed another trip around the sun and have hit the magic number of 44. Double digits is always a fun number. I don’t know why. There’s just something bouncy and fun about it.
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