social shit.

I hate that I don’t understand that way things work socially. I’ve yet to figure out how to get people to really like me. I’ve yet to figure out how to know that living your life in pursuit of that is the quickest way to real live hell.
Every social encounter, practically, is a chore for me. I must say the right thing, I must make the right person laugh, I must play the game well and maybe I’ll get the chance to sit at the right table at the D.C. Most of the frustration results from this suspicion that I rarely measure up.
I feel constantly inadequate and unacceptable. It makes my stomach hurt. And I’d like to say needing this kind of social affirmation and acceptance is irrelevant, but that’s just not true. Sometimes there are people you want to know – need to know, even - and working the intricacies of social interaction can make or break you.
We live this stuff; we worry daily about fitting in, we study communication, we write and read books with rules about interacting and talking with people. Regardless of how much we think it really matters or affects us, it does. We know that first impressions mean something, that sometimes it is all about “who you know” (a deathtrap for the shy) and that once we’ve determined someone is awkward (and not in an endearing way) it requires tremendous effort to avoid the influence of prejudice on our future encounters with that person.
We live by “cool,” (or whatever you want to call it) and it can be hell for the unfunny, the unintelligent and the uninteresting; or for the ones who just can’t seem to rise above this social nonsense and self-consciousness.
I want to be extraordinary, the best at everything I’m good at. So when I look around and realize that I’m not, even within my own community, it’s overwhelmingly painful. To me it diminishes my purpose. My worth is based on what you think of me, Greenville College, and it’s certainly not in a healthy way. My motives are all about what I will appear to be, rather than what I’m actually becoming.
So what is this anyway? A pity party? Probably. A chance to offer a disclaimer that I acknowledge what you might think is wrong with me and am working diligently to fix it? On a subconscious level, certainly. Is it the bored but somehow passionate frustrations of a self-proclaimed neurotic suffering from a variety of cognitive distortions? No doubt.
Most importantly, though, this is me getting real vulnerable and reaching out to my community to offer something that destroys my life in hopes that somehow we can share it and make life a little better for each other.
The worth that we place on the popular, on the attractive – the blatant inequality that we promote and produce daily, the easy overwrite of all those who don’t say the right things, act the right way, fend the same cause, destroys people.
We must think about our relationships, we must reflect on how and why we love, and more than anything we must know that we are worth something and that we are inextricably and unexplainably linked, entangled, connected t o the point that if we refuse to love one, to see the beauty and the value in just one, we refuse to love all.
Prejudice is hell, but you and I, friend, we are infinitely worthy.