Rejoining society – attempt #1

Just got back from a barbeque at my friend Nick’s place.  Good lord, I don’t get out enough.  It’s wonderful to have intelligent conversation with people my own age, but I’m out of practice.  I get tongue-tied and stutter.  I’m not very articulate even when I have something well worth saying.  I hope something can be done about this. 

I know I’m a good way ahead of where I used to be.  I used to be terribly shy in my childhood and teens.  I had nothing to say at all.  Some things do change.  Now I’m that chatty person who jokes and makes conversation with every shopkeeper and sales assistant she meets, and takes all afternoon to buy her groceries as a result. 

I still have no confidence for romance though.  I’m quite comfortable around men as friends, but that’s as far as it goes.  Maybe I’ve been misconceptualising it.  Perhaps it’s not that romance is a relationship that goes "further than" friendship.  Perhaps romance is more akin to enmity, or at least rivalry.  Perhaps the whole point is that it’s not supposed to be friendly, and that’s how you avoid the familiarity that stifles those relationships. 

Alexander and I were always friends.  That’s why we stayed friends.  But perhaps that was part of the problem for us a couple.  To be honest, I’ve never had the courage or the confidence for that sort of confrontation.  Perhaps I hadn’t realised to what extent my fear of confrontation crippled me.  The truth is ugly.