Hermit-Like Librarian is Hermit-Like
Linda over on All & Sundry wrote a post about how hard it is for her to make and keep friends. The paragraphs that really hit me were numbers 2 and 3:
I don’t have many friends, really. I am shy and reserved and I find it hard to accept the inherent vulnerability that comes with friendships and I’m not good at maintaining them and I’m terrible at reaching out and sometimes I wonder there’s something fundamentally broken in me in this regard.
I fill this friend-shaped void with the internet and I don’t really know if that’s sad or sensible, if I’m a pathological dork or someone who’s just making connections where she can.
Judging by how many friends I currently have, and by the fact that I don’t spend every weekend lost and lonely, I must not be as bad at making friends as I think (although it does seem to me that my friends work harder at being friends with me than I do at being friends with them). And I have enough friends of different kinds in this area that I probably don’t need to spend any weekend alone, if I’d just send a few texts or make a few phone calls.
But, haha! that’s where the “I may be broken” part comes in. I’ve mentioned this before: when I go out and do things, it never occurs to me to invite other people. Sometimes (a lot of the time, actually) I want to be alone, but if one of my friends calls me when I’m feeling introverted, I have no problem saying I’m not up to it, call me next time. And yet somehow I assume my calling and suggesting activities, or asking if anything’s going on, is a tremendous imposition to my friends.
I’m not sure how to get over this. One problem is that I don’t understand social cues. People don’t say what they mean, you guys. I certainly don’t! But I know when I’m lying to be polite, and I’m never certain if the “Call me soon so we can hang out!” coming from someone else is the literal truth, a polite lie, or is true now but won’t be true next weekend.
Also, I don’t understand “hanging out.” I don’t understand “getting together.” I don’t understand “let’s get lunch.” These are all completely foreign concepts to me. Because, you know, they involve other people, and their schedules, and their dietary restrictions, and their interests, and their personalities.
Hanging out and getting lunch with myself (and the internet!) is just so much easier.
