I have a serious handicap. Well, I have many, but one of them is shyness. I am an introvert and I hate it.
I dont think it is something I can change. I can make an effort to be more outgoing but the shyness won't go away.
When you get to know me I probably won't shut up. But when I meet new people I am a clam. I am totally socially inept in that way. I assume some people are just born to be introverts.
It sucks at work at the moment because everyone is new to me and my shyness is asserting itself big time. It can be such a barrier. I feel like a tongue-tied idiot. It seems that words flow straight from my brain to my fingers and bypass my mouth completely. I can write perfectly coherently but half the time I can barely string a sentence together out loud.
If you put me together with an extrovert, things are great. Extroverts tend to bring out introverts naturally and easily. But if you put me together with another introvert that I don't know... oh god, the torture. My brain freezes, and, so I am assuming, does the brain of the other person. I sit there in a panic trying desperately to think of something to talk about. How about that weather? Oh crap I already talked about the weather! But there is a lot of weather, surely I can squeeze some more juice out of that one?
We usually end up in strained silence, with me still trying to think of something to say, and my brain in a total seizure. I just have no small talk inside of me.
Introverts tend to be discriminated against in life, obviously, because we don't assert ourselves. I definitely felt that my school teachers disliked us quieter folk, and they often told us that to get anywhere in life we had to be more outgoing. Oh well, so much for that.
I used to think I should change, but now I can't be bothered. I like me, social retardedness and all. You just have to give me a chance. A friendship with me is like a good, smelly, mould infested cheese; it improves markedly with age.
