Parties

So a friend asked me to a party for yesterday. This is what goes on in my head:

I said asked her why her sister was not going or her best friend and find out that they all have plans. So I say yes and then ask what I should wear. Clothing is very important. I used to not understand this and would turn up to social events in inappropriate clothing. I just did not understand. I had rationalized it out at the clothes did not make the man and i was more than just what my clothes said about me, and I was, but no one really cares about a person dressed like a bum and no one will try to understand them. So I said yes and found out that it was semi formal and shorts were acceptable, so I wore nicish pants and an okay dress down dress shirt, because it is better to be over dressed than under dressed.

The week before I was trying to figure out if my friend was trying to put the moves on me, so I was reviewing everything mentioned in the past two weeks or so, to see if there was something there. You just don't know how much people flirt with their friends and mean nothing by it. I spent some time trying to deduce it from body language. AS people have a difficult time reading people because body language is not natural to them, so they can't read it, nor can they broadcast it easily. So there are a lot of crossed signals for everyone concerned. I came up with a pretty solid case that she likes me a lot before tossing the conclusion aside because she dislikes men and she said I look like her brothers and that creeps her out. I could go into detail why I think she liked me, but that is beyond this story, we are friends.

I am an introvert. Very introverted. Extremely. I did the Myers-Briggs personality test and I got a score that said that I was more than two standard deviations into introversion. I am a good candidate for reclusion. All my friends know that I am introverted, but they don't really understand how much. So I went to this party with my friend as a friend in her car. When we got there she said she only wanted to stay for an hour because she does not like parties much either. I told her that I had planned out my escape route and could abandon her at any second. But I did not.

I do not like to trespass any where. I feel uneasy approaching a friend's door to knock on it unless I feel really comfortable. So walking on this property to the party in broad daylight was stressful. And there were people there. People I did not know. People I did not know who knew people I did know. In a small town. There is a difference between small towns and cities. Cities you can act like an ass and no one will remember you and they won't care and they don't care because they have better things to do than to care. In small towns people take notes and they compare their notes with other people on what every other person did, or did not do. So I was in good behavior mode, extreme good behavior mode.

In the city at the train station there is an urge in everyone to jump before the train and kill yourself. Most people stand near the wall and live in fear, some people stand at the edge and realize that it is a dumb urge and resist others lean out to see how close they can get without getting hurt, some people die. For other people the train no longer has any pull and they do not react or care. When I am stressed out the train sings to me and taunts me to jump in front of it. I know that I would die and it would be bad so I restrain myself, hold my hand back behind my back hard, grip my wrist with an iron grip, make a tense fist, flex my hand stretched as far as it can go, to show myself that I am in control and not the whisper. The whisper is natural, it is the little demon sitting on your back telling you to do the wrong thing most people can ignore it and I assume like the train example, some do not even know that it is there. When I am stressed, the whisper sings to me.

People who always listen to the whisper are in jail or are insane; they are the people that do the really nasty things in the world seemingly on a whim. Everyone has the whisper telling them take the money, no body is watching and you need the money more than them. When ever people listen to the whisper they get into trouble or they have a lot of fun, depending on what the whisper tells them to do. I was tense at the party, I was in control, complete control, I did not eat or drink a thing I talked when people talked to me, I did not know hardly anyone. The mayor was there, my landlady was there, people who knew my parents were there, people who knew my friends were there. Lots of people I did not know, but knew me because I helped them at my workplace were there. That means, I could afford no slip ups at all. And I had none, but I was as tense as a spring under pressure.

My friend commented that she had no idea that i was so uncomfortable in public or she would never have asked me. She said I looked so awkward and tense. She had no idea.

The next day I let her into my head a little. I told her that the entire time I was controlling myself keeping myself in control, I reminded her how important in a small town it is to put on a good face in public and that I could not ruin it by letting my thoughts reign my actions. The more stressed out I get the darker the whispers get. So she said it is not like your thoughts were of raping and killing the people around me!

I said nothing.