Shy

Being shy is a real curse. I hate it. People around me sometimes don't believe I am shy... maybe shy is the wrong word. Maybe it's that I'm painfully self-conscious. I know I really struggle to start friendships, because I just don't know how to do general chit-chat. And that means people see me as rather stand-offish. I guess it doesn't help that what I think of as my 'neutral' expression seems to be interpreted by the rest of the world as 'pissed off'!

And with being self-conscious, comes being self aware. I'm very aware of my negative points... that I'm grumpy, intolerant, bossy, slightly misogynistic, cynical, morose, opinionated... (This is not a desperate fish for compliments... I'm also aware of my positives!)

All this leads to many of my friendships being a bit superficial, and if I meet other shy people, it's almost impossible for me to connect. I know this is mainly down to me not opening up about myself, but I'd have to say that my life has shown me that a lot of the time, being open comes back to bite me in the ass, and ends up in me getting hurt!

I would love to have the sorts of friendships I see other people have – where you can just hang out together and kill some time in pleasant company. Where instead of lurking on the internet for hours at a time like some freakish saddo, I can spend time relaxing with affable people in the real world. But guess what? The reason I don't really have friendships like that is because I don't know how to be that sort of friend.

Jeez... reading this back, it looks really self-indulgent and whiny; I generally try to keep my blog entries light, factual and positive... Is that the self-conscious Seamus creeping in? Don't worry, it's all quite tongue-in-cheek. Maybe I should look on it as an attempt to be open :-)

PS - To my friends - I love you all, don't read anything unnecessary into this post - I'm grateful to have you!