I have trouble making real connections

Tweet

One of the things I've always been honest about is that I am not particularly popular among anyone, not even my own family. I was never the first one chosen to do anything. Part of that is because I like to keep my private life private. I don't like to air out my issues for everyone to know and see. I might tell some people some things but I'm definitely not an open book. I have made it difficult for people to get close to me but this is also in part due to my social awkwardness. I have never known how to handle certain situations. I try to be kind and everyone usually does at least say I'm a kind person but I'm not the type of person most people get close to. I have friends and I have family but I'm not the type of person most people would drop everything for. I keep a super small circle. I'm not anyone's favorite person but people don't hate me either. I'm just kind of there a lot of the time. This has never really bothered me. I'm not a people person. I enjoy my solitude and I occasionally enjoy hanging out with friends or family but I don't feel the need to be constantly around people. I feel claustrophobic around too many people. I love my alone time. I need my alone time in order to regroup and get myself together. There are times I'd love to have more friends but I am just not good at making connections because of my aloofness at times. I can occasionally come off as mean even though I'm not. It's just that I have never been able to relate to most people. I am great at reading people but not so great at connecting with them. I can feel what they're feeling but talking to them is a whole other thing. I have been socially awkward as far back as I can remember. When I do make friends I seem to keep them for a long time but often times they're a lot like me which is why we relate. None of us are big talkers and there are times we go months without saying a word to each other and no one thinks we hate each other but the issue there is also that we seldom spend any time with each other or want to do anything. Growing up we always used to have birthday parties for my mom and everyone would show up and I always thought wow that would be great to have everyone you love just suddenly show up for you and I realized that would never be me. I am only close to a handful of people and they're all busy and not the type to show up at parties and I'm ok with that. I realized neither my husband or myself are the type of people who could throw a birthday party for one another because there are only a handful of people we actually associate with outside of work and each other. I have my husband and my son and my parents. My siblings while I love them all we aren't particularly close to each other. My sisters might show up to a party but it's really a toss up. I have friends and always have. I just wasn't anyone's best friend most of the time. I have two best friends and that was always good enough for me but now that we are older with families of our own we rarely see each other and most of the time that's fine with me but sometimes I realize how much it bites to not have someone outside of my husband nearby to really be able to hang out with at times. I love being alone but I also occasionally want someone to be able to hang out with. My husband is going to be gone for a few days soon and it'll just be me with my son and while I love my kid it isn't the same as having another adult to hang out with. I just don't connect to many people. Being able to connect means opening myself up more and I'm not nor have I ever been comfortable with that. I feel like some things in my life are not meant to be open for public debate. When you open yourself you are trusting another human with your secrets and your feelings and I just don't trust easily and never have. Being socially awkward means I've never been able to truly get close to many people. I am more than I appear sometimes. Mylotters know more about me than most people who know me in person because it's easy to talk to virtual strangers than it is to talk to people who know me but that said there are things that no one knows about me and there are things that only my husband knows about me. I don't share things because some things are difficult to share. I walk around with a lot of things unsaid. I don't deal with emotions very well either. I've never been good at personally expressing my emotions to anyone outside of my husband and son. I have never been able to figure out why I am this way or why it is I don't trust. I guess because I've observed people in real life and see how they are to one another and I learned early on you can't trust anyone. I really am ok with things the way they are most of the time but I do have moments where I wonder what it's like to be the favorite sibling or friend. I wonder why it is I've never been able to really connect to most people. I do ok with talking to people at work and I haven't met a ton of people who don't like me, but yes there are definitely people who don't like me. You don't go through life with not having anyone not like you simply because you exist. I just am who I am and I don't try to be something I'm not and I feel like sometimes that's the problem. Being who I am is being distant and difficult to truly get to know. A lot of people know random things about me but they don't know everything. I am not always proud of some of the things I've done. I'm not going to act like I'm some perfect person because I'm not. I'm stubborn, and emotionally difficult. I say things I don't mean. I am incredibly judgmental at times despite my best efforts not to be and sometimes I need to really give myself a reality check and remember I am not perfect either. I also know that I have an amazing sense of humor most of the time and believe in being kind but sometimes I fail there too. I am quiet in person until I get to know people. I am me. I don't pretend to be something I'm not. If I were extroverted and more open I think it'd be easier for me to make friends but that's not who I am. I think letting people in is always going to be one of the hardest things for me. It goes against my very nature. I got a lesson early on that people aren't to be trusted when I had people who I thought were my friends betray me and ever since then I've been a closed book. I don't share the bad parts of my life. I struggle with the hard parts of my life mostly on my own. My husband is probably the only person who really knows me at every level. Online I am able to vent here and there and make online friends but it's not always the same as having friends offline. Having people you know will be there for you when the chips are down. I have my husband and my son and I guess that's all I really need. It has always been us against the world. I do hope my son is better than us at making connections and that he can find people he trusts. It's a tough world. Maybe one day I'll meet a few true friends who I can really be myself around. Until then I have the handful of people I do trust.