I don’t remember if I was a shy kid. When I was very young I mostly had my sisters as playmates, but I don’t remember ever having a lack of friends, even when we moved to Utah and I started a new school. In fact, I don’t think that my shyness has ever really prevented me from making friends. I might have made them more quickly if I was outgoing, but eventually somebody fell in love with my shining-rock-star-personality. It’s in there, you just have to be patient.
I don’t know if it was shyness that led to my social anxiety. Or if it’s some weird genetic thing, or learned. I can’t think of any one particular thing happening to bring it out. I do, however, remember the first time it really manifested itself. My first school dance was in Middle School. They had probably four a year, and they were always during school, usually taking up the last two periods of classes. These weren’t dances that you were “asked out” to. It was every kid who wasn’t in detention, trying to find a spot along the wall (boys on one side, girls on another) wondering who was going to be the first to walk into the empty middle, or worse, cross the entire gym to ask someone to dance.
I spent the first dance of my 6th grade year locked in a bathroom stall, praying for it to be over. My clothes were all wrong. My shirt didn’t go with my skirt. What if no one asked me to dance? What if someone did? My crush was probably dancing with someone else. What if my dad (who was the art teacher) made a boy ask me, even though he didn’t want to? It was horrible. I felt sick the entire time and when the next dance arrived, I requested a pass to the library to watch a movie. I think there were two other kids there that weren’t in detention.
Eventually, I did go to a dance. And eventually, everything I was worried about did happen. In fact, my dad actually danced WITH me. Embarrassing right? Except it really wasn’t. Every thought that had caused me to pull my feet up on the toilet and hope and hope that no one found out I was in that bathroom stall, turned out to be no big deal.
And yet…I still struggle with social anxiety. Not on a daily basis anymore, but still several times a week. And even though I still get butterflies when I have to talk to a stranger, I don’t immediately hang up the phone out of fear, or avoid eye contact, or duck behind merchandise hoping that the sales clerk doesn’t ask me if I need help. Now I can almost always take a deep breath and try to act like a normal human being. And I’m a much happier person because of it.
My baby sister just turned 18. I don’t think I ever bothered to really talk to her until about a year ago, when I started staying home from work and she was attending a school near my house. We started to have lunch together and I found out that she’s a pretty cool person. You can’t help but smile when she’s around you. I don’t think I can explain it any further…that’s just how she is. When she walks in to a store, she’ll say hello. And not in a sheepish, small voice either - it’s all freakin’ sunshine. She says thank you when she leaves, even if she didn’t buy anything. She doesn’t sneak out, determined not to be noticed. To me, it’s like watching an alien. And in the year that I spent getting to know her, I also got an extra push to shake off the anxiety that was still wrapped around me. She is a normal person with ornery streaks, let’s not forget, and I have had a lot of help from everyone close to me, but I honestly think that my time with her helped prepare me for moving out to an unknown place.
I think another big motivator for me has been trying to explain social anxiety to someone who has never experienced it. Tom, for one, but many other friends and family members as well. There is no good explanation of why asking a clerk for help, calling for pizza, or getting the oil changed in my car would cause me to become physically ill. In fact, it sounds so ridiculous that I rarely talk about it. So ridiculous that I have made an effort, every day since I was 19, to shed those feelings bit by bit.
Today Ella and I drove to the YMCA in downtown Harrisburg to attend a swim class. A swim class that I signed up for, in person, a few months before. I parked in a semi-creepy alley, took a deep breath, and walked in smiling. I didn’t attempt conversation with any of the other moms, but I didn’t avoid eye contact either. I smiled instead. Of course I also spent the entire class trying to pry Ella’s hands from the death grip she had on my throat. No time for chit chat when your independent child has now become a permanent growth on your chest.
At the end of class, the mom with the only other girl came and started some small talk. We walked to the changing rooms together and by the time we left, I had the potential of a new friend. Even if it will just be for swim class, it’s still a connection. This would never have happened, even a few years ago. I wasn’t feeling good today, and in the past I would have used it as an excuse. And if I wasn’t sick, I would have come up with something else. So despite the fact that I felt out-of-it, and slightly nauseated the entire time, I was happy.
When I asked Ella if she wanted to go back next week she said, very emphatically, “NO! Momma! No. More. Water.” I’m sure she’ll get used to it though, and I’m actually looking forward to going back. Plus, I already shelled out the bucks, and that seems to me to be the kind of excuse that will get you out of your shell, instead of back in it.
(More, of course, to be found at 
