642 "I promise I'll try." Ever since I saw this suggestion on the horizon, or rather page, I've been trying to think of a specific occasion when I've broken a promise, but I've come up naught. This isn't some attempt at implicating myself as a virtuous person, it's just that I don't make promises because if you make promises you have to keep them and you really shouldn't make promises unless you're a hundred and five percent sure that you can keep them. There'll probably be occasions when I've said I promise, "I promise I'll remember to put bleach down the toilet at bedtime" but even if I then subsequently do forget, I'm not sure it really matters. Plus I tend to remember. Also it would be weak sauce for a blog post.
Then I realised that "I promise I'll try" exists and has been deployed far too much by me over the years, entirely to my own detriment. Despite being an extrovert in some ways, in most other respects across the years I've been socially awkward and entertained a fairly low self esteem. Partly that was due to being an only child who spent a lot of time playing Chuckie Egg and watching Moonlighting rather than playing out, being bullied a lot at school and overweight most of my life. Whenever anyone did pay attention to me, or seemed to be a friend, it was always with an imaginary asterisk which suggested that the friendship only existed until someone better came along. Which they frequently did and I'd find myself being pushed to the side.
Because of that, I'd always wonder exactly what it was that I did which led people to not invite me to that night out or decide not to sit next to me in class. For years I had a friend who had also had a wider social circle also knew through school and regular quiz nights and the like who also knew me, and he'd go out with them, even initiate social events, but not invite me. Then he'd tell me all about what happened the next time we saw each other (the two of us would still go for drinks) and when I subtly indicated I was free and could have gone, he'd suggest that it was "very last minute" or "I didn't think you'd be interested" as though I didn't have the ability to drop everything at the last minute (I did) or a general curiosity about everything.
When this sort of thing happens (and it happened enough with him to become a pattern) it feeds into your social anxiety which leads you into a paradoxical state of wanting to make friends but not wanting potential friends to find you out, discover whatever personality flaw you have which has led people to keep you at arms length (even if, as I've come to realise, the flaw is imaginary) and so let the cycle begin again of finding yourself uninvited to social events, ignored or made to feel less than important. Although for various reasons, on occasion, I know I've kept people at arms length myself for various reasons but that's just part of the spiraling self-destructive strategy which leads to "I promise I'll try".
"I promise I'll try" is what happens when you're invited to social events and although there's absolutely no reason why you shouldn't go and there's a possibility that you might enjoy yourself but the whole thing of it, the process seems so huge that you just can't be bothered dealing with it. You imagine that it'll be like those other occasions when you've attended parties, only really known the host and found yourself sitting at the very end of the table looking into space half listening to in-jokes, sat trying to look interested in a person's cd collection at a house party or wandering around a crowd of people who all seem to know each other without the guts to simply join one of the conversations because you don't want to interrupt or have them think you're strange for doing so.
So you'll be asked, "Would you like to come to this thing, it would be great to see you..." and you'll answer "I promise I'll try" even though you have no intention of going. Of course in these sentences, "you'll" actually means "I'll". Sometimes it has been because whatever they're proposing does sound horrendous for whatever reason but most likely it's because of all the images expressed in the previous paragraph and I simply don't want to be stuck in those situations again. The fact that many of those situations are due to my own low self esteem and that I can't imagine why these people's lives would be enriched by my existence is ignored in this social spiral. They like me now, they have this image of me now, I don't want to be constantly thinking that I could ruin that.
Of course, what ultimately happens is that people stop asking because of course they would and should. If someone says no to them, and it is a no even though it has four words in it rather than two letters, and says it enough times, they'll assume that it's because the person isn't interested even though that couldn't be further from the truth. I just want to be able to say "yes" on my own terms, for the resulting night out or party to be the opposite of the shit show I have playing in my head. But I'm too afraid of that so "I promise I'll try" escapes from my lips even as I take all the details nonetheless even though the invitee already feels the preliminary senses of a brush off, knowing full well that I'll be sat at home that night watching FRIENDS. Again.
No comments:
Post a Comment