Shy

Hi, my name is Brian and I’m shy. God, I sound like I’m at an AA meeting. It’s true though… me being shy I mean. I can’t really tell you how it happened. One day I was a normal thirteen-year-old, and then the next thing I knew I was a shy weirdo. My parents thought I’d grow out of it, but here I am twenty years later just as shy as ever.
Being shy is really hard because no one really understands what you’re going through unless they’ve actually been shy. The only way I can describe it is it’s like being trapped in a glass case. You really want to get out, but you don’t know how. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve wanted to just say hi to someone, but couldn’t because I couldn’t get the words out of my mouth. My mind literally goes blank and I can’t think of anything to say. Do you know how frustrating it is to be a thirty three-year-old man who has never had an adult conversation? It’s devastating. When I see all of my co-workers laughing, and joking, and having fun together it makes me sad. Sometimes I just want to scream, “Talk to me too,” but I don’t. I just pretend like I’m busy doing something at my desk and secretly dream that I’m friend’s with all of them.
It’s kind of weird because sometimes it seems so real. I have this whole life in my head. I have a best friend named Mike and we’ve known each other since high school. We hang out together, and I was best man at his wedding… I have a wife too, her name is Teresa and we have three kids, Brian Jr, Justin and Kendra… I know it’s not normal, but I have to do something or I’ll go mad.
I’ve been trying so hard to have a real life, but sometimes it’s hard. I wake up every morning and say, “Okay Brian, today your going to make a new friend.” Then I get out of bed, dress myself, and go to work. I take a deep breath and walk up to the group of people standing around talking and then… I freeze. I start shaking like a leaf, my tongue gets all twisted, and I just stand there unable to say anything except, “Hi.” So I go back to my desk and feel like a stupid fool for the rest of the day.
It’s hard. I want what everyone else wants. Do you realize I’ve never had one close relationship outside of my immediate family? It’s because I can never figure out how to make someone want to be my friend. I always find it fascinating when I see two people become friends. I mean how does it happen? Who invites who to hang out first? Are there rules? I want to know because I wanna do it too.
Sometimes I hate who I am, and what I’ve become. How is it I can find success in my professional career and suffer so much personally? I make a hundred thousand dollars a year, drive a Lexus, and own my own home, yet I would gladly give it all up if I just had someone to play basketball with on Saturdays. I feel so hopeless sometimes… What if I end up shy for the rest of my life?
Now don’t think I haven’t tried to change. I’ve been to every shyness class in Southern California, but it hasn’t helped. They all say the same thing, “Just go out and talk to people.” Now if it was that easy, I wouldn’t have spent the four hundred dollars for the class.
But I can’t spend my time crying over spilled milk, I just have to keep trying. The truth is, I’m a lot better than I was ten years ago. I actually went to the mall Saturday and looked at televisions. Now that might not seem like much to you, but for me that was a mile stone. See I haven’t been to the mall since 1983 when that nasty women… I was thirteen and I had the worst acne on the face of the earth. My face oozed with pus and bled… I looked like one big pimple. I was so sensitive about my skin… Anyway, I was in the mall one day with some kids from school, and this woman walks up to me with her daughter (who was eating an icecream cone) and says in a really loud voice, “Keep eating all that junk and you’ll end up like Frankenstein here.” I can still hear all the kids laughing at me. I was so embarrassed. I felt so dirty, so freakish, so inhuman… I wanted to run and hide. I was so shocked. I just stood there with my mouth open. How could an adult be so cruel? She never even thought about how what she said would effect me. She just walked off like she had just said hello. The funny thing is I can still see the horror in her daughter’s eyes as she put that cone in the trash can. I’d like to find that woman now. I’d snap her neck like a pencil. Just thinking about that… how it changed me… makes me so mad. Maybe if she hadn’t been so mean, if I hadn’t been so sensitive… Maybe I’d be somewhere having a beer with my good friends, or picking my kids up from school, or taking my wife out to a movie. I don’t know… I just wish I hadn’t wasted so much time.