Soliloquy

Have you ever felt that sense of helplessness as you watch the people around you find meaningful connections to other people around them and you’re left all alone, unable to relate to the ones around you and yet unable to withdraw from it all and leave?

I guess people like me, we’re a doomed kind… we crave for the companionship but we’re never happy with what we have. It becomes all the starker when we find ourselves in the fringes. We’re never the centre of attention to anyone. We’re just the ones that people fall back on and then, when it’s time for them to move on, we’re left, cold and unwanted. 

Before people accuse me of being an attention monger, something that I've been accused of being, by a few, some as close as family, let me clarify. I am in no means villainizing the others. Power to you, well liked extrovert, for being all that I want to be but never can!

For those who've known me long enough, they never believe me when I tell them how much of an introvert I am. They have always seen my smiles and the silly jokes that it could never occur to them, bless their souls, that I could actually find it daunting to speak to someone I don’t know! They forget all too easily that when they first met me, they either thought me the insufferable bitch or the infallible snow queen. Time… how he changes minds!

But am I jealous? No. I know I can never walk up to a stranger and strike a conversation! I’d think up of a million scenarios where the conversation goes south and I never utter a word beyond that point. I am aware of the many opportunities I miss because of this habit. This blog was started initially so that I could lose my inhibitions baring myself to the world. But baring your inner thoughts on the internet is not even close to opening yourself up to people in the real world. There are no delete buttons and you cannot close your account when it gets overwhelming. You have to stand there and either suffer as the people around you pick you to pieces or you run away to some place where you know they won’t follow.

I am braver online than I am in real life. Funny… having been through the ordeals I’ve been through (and still am going through), people scoff and call me vainly humble when I tell them that I don’t feel brave. That I am not strong!

If I were truly as strong as they claim me to be, I wouldn't be here, writing this.

To all my friends, old and new, I love you! Please don’t for a moment, think otherwise. It’s just that when you run in that fast pace of yours, meeting and greeting strangers, being so confident with your accomplishments, smiling and dazzling the world, people like me get left behind. And sometimes… just sometimes, we feel an emotion akin to resentment. The reason I don’t outright call it resentment is because it isn't. What I feel when I'm in that position is a feeling of mixed guilt, disappointment and just a dab of anger with a copious dash of sadness. 

When we’re in a group and suddenly, I am not longer part of the conversation, I feel this emotion. Strangely, I seem to innately feel when someone else is left out. Maybe they don’t mind. But I feel them, and my attempts at including them in the conversation has irked quite a number of people. I guess we know what it feels to be left out, the introverts who’re dying to have someone pay attention to us… acknowledge our existence.

They lie when they tell you that love is the greatest gift of them all!

No… to be heard and to be seen… that is what everybody craves for. We humans are a depraved and pathetic species like that… it’s all about us… it’s always about us. And sometimes, when you’re left out, you realize it all too soon.