An Author's Lament

Chapter One: Strangers

With Summer come and gone and fall in full blast, each day has a new reason to wake up in the morning. A new purpose, new experiences, and new horrors to be seen. To be honest, I've never really enjoyed my Summers; they are too short and with very little outside human interaction.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy my time alone at home. It's calming and relaxing to just crack open a good book, open a box of sinful cookies, and lay down in the middle of a carpeted living room floor for hours, simply reading. However, spending a day with no human interaction what-so-ever can take its toll on the mind. Also adding in the fact that too much interaction can make anyone go insane. That may be my introverted-self talking, but I agree with it wholeheartedly. Personally, when I talk with friends, I feel lifted in a way. I don't mean lifted spiritually (as i have no religious beliefs), simply less heavy. I feel overjoyed that people want to have a conversation with me, even if it doesn't last as long as I hope it would. It's a sense of self that I find very calming in retrospect.

However, why is it that I find strangers so hard to hold a conversation with?

There is a sense of anxiety that comes when talking to someone I don't know. Perhaps it's only the mail man handing me a package; but my mind has milliseconds to wander into the stupidest of reasons not to utter a simple thank you. The mail person was not mean, they were not glaring, they were simply doing their job. Their job is to bring me packages. Me, the ingrate who can't even say " I appreciate what you do for me" (maybe not quite like that). Why can't I respond alike with common curtesy?

I believe it is because the mail man is a stranger with whom I have never talked to. When you are taught from from preschool to beware of strangers, suddenly being anti-social is the "thing of the future!". I am not saying that teachers and role models are responsible for my actions, but I think they are the cause of the anxiety. They said that all strangers are bad and to never trust one. As a kid, you can never really differentiate between the strangers you meet and strangers you stay away from. This lead to an inability to determine the people I talked to and how I acted. Talked little, told little, read a lot, and spent most of my time with the only people who weren't strangers to me, my family; And even then, a few of my uncles still unsettled me as a young child. I am still a child, even though I am sixteen, but you understand what I am getting at.

I still have issues talking to some people, like the pizza delivery guy over the phone or a joe-shmoe walking by in their mid thirties or twenties. Yet, there are also people with whom I feel no ill will toward. The elderly have never really struck me as dangerous nor particularly threatening, nor have children or mothers (though, there are a few exceptions to this). I think it boils down to human instinct coupled with society, mixed together with the anxiety. There are people we instinctively trust and harbour no ill will toward. People we can sit and have a cup of coffee with at a cafe without knowing a single thing about them. Yet, there are those who make us shudder at the thought of them coming close to us. It's not like we mean to do it, but something about them makes you plain uncomfortable.

I have a friend like this. She is rather sweet and small, and reminds me a lot of a Grizzly Bear Cub longing for a mother to care for her. She claims her innocence (though, I still have no clue how sure I am of this...).

I digress.

I've found that every time I begin to talk to her about the simplest things, she begins to rant on and on about god knows what. I am being told about who cheated on who, who set up who, who she is pining after this week. During this, She starts to hug me and touch me. This is where I doubt her innocence. When she does so, it's like I am being seduced by a tiny girl. She rubs up against you like a cat and strokes parts of you rather uncomfortably. It is not a very pleasing thought to have at 9 in the morning every weekday (and I am not the only one to feel like this). I'll admit, I enjoy hugs from friends every once and a while, but there are some people you just don't want to be touched by, no offence to them.

She isn't a stranger, so why do I have anything to worry about? I used to hardly know her, heck I met her through her ex (my best friend) but I should be okay with her, now. After all, I have gotten to know her since. Life sadly doesn't work like that. If you can still see people as a stranger who can do you harm, why would you want to be anywhere near them? They could harm you, do you wrong, take you away; they could do god knows what to you and you would never see it coming. People are tricky. They are Tricky to read, tricky to talk to, tricky to guess: After all, no one thinks the same. Some folks are simple, others are complex and live within labyrinths they made themselves. We are no different from one another on molecular levels. We are all organic material, made up of organisms, on a planet that sustains life, in one of the many systems of Space.

This is where society comes in. From the time we are born, we are told to do things and act a certain way. Why? Because it is how we should act. How we are supposed to act depending on our class, race, gender, or even income. Even in social working this is true. My mother is unable to speak to the very women who helped her get to the position she is in, due to the fact that she is in upper management. She is confronted with being a good friend but also having to please her bosses. Yet she is told to talk to her bosses to get promoted, even though they are held to the very same standards.

How does that work? Those tiny contradictions that haunt everyday life. Women are expected to be kind and sweet, but we are exactly the opposite. Men are expected to be firm and manly, yet we have girly men. We label people and give stereotypes so hypocritically, we hardly realise it until we are point it out; even when the fact is revealed, no one cares or are too embarrassed to correct themselves , fighting the people who do.

A comment is made. Riots are lead. People are killed. We put a patch over it. And we ever-so-slowly pick at it again, similar to a scab.

Look at the entirety of history. So many misconceptions and miscommunications to count. So many wars that could have been stopped. So many ideas that flourished, only to be crushed by others who felt threatened. We build walls, begging for others to peek over that way we can accuse them of peeping, and yet, we have the urge to glance over those very same walls. People against people. Strangers against Strangers.

Where does anxiety stem from all of this? The creeping fear of unease towards those we have had no relation to. Perhaps its the fact that we are afraid of what spontaneous people will do. Maybe it's a fear of reactions or even phobias that detach you from conversations. But what ever reason it is, it's usually mental and not physical. I think it comes from age old fears. (From Lore) "H.P. Lovecraft... had once said that the oldest human emotion is fear and that the oldest type of fear is fear of the unknown." We fear the unknown things, like the dark. People are similar in that fact, acting horrendously and bitterly. But people can also have kind and compassionate souls.

I suppose, after all of this, that a fear of talking to people is both rational and irrational. Strangers can be devilish and deceitful. However, Strangers are just a step away from acquaintances. And acquaintances are the cornerstone of so many other relationships in life. Whether it be partners, or competitors. We will never be able to tell which is which at a glance (possibly not even after a good long look), but if we never say anything, we may never get the chance to find out.

~Pheonix