Methodical Musings

A room filled with people – the noise pulsating back and forth – each person caught up in the moment. At the edge of the room, several individuals dance their heart out to the deep bass of the jass music coming from the band in front of me. I make eye contact several times with an extremely cute girl who slowly makes her way my direction and ends up standing next to me. I freeze. I don’t know what to say. I don’t want to say anything.  So I don’t hit on her – even though I knew in my gut she wanted me to, her arm brushing mine.

It’s just too much. The whole thing is. Too many bodies, too many faces, too much noise, too much energy to figure it all out. Too many voices, inflections in voices, too many relationships and friends, too many styles of clothing… I feel like I’m in complete overload mode and I can’t handle it. I want to find a chair in a corner and just sit and watch people for an hour… because then I know I will feel comfortable about everything and then I could rock the party with cool confidence and approach anyone out of the blue.  I’ve been that way before, but not with new groups of people!

Every half an hour or so I have to walk to the other quiet room. Each person’s face in that pulsating, crowded room tells a story – a past – and reveals a whole set of emotions and intentions and, in many ways, I feel like I can see through it all. I’m rarely surprised when someone tells me something about themselves… in fact I can often predict things about people and their intentions and on many occasions it has made people mad, confused, or scared about me. But when there are that many faces, it is just too much… too much information to figure out. I don’t know how to handle it.

But tonight, I was trying desperately to enjoy the party like everyone else around me… and I did, but only by getting away from the group almost every 15-20 minutes… into the other quiet room to sit and think seemingly about next to nothing for five minutes. And then I could go back into the party.

And I’ve been trying to figure out why this is. Why do I feel this way? Why do parties and large groups of new people in particular drain all the energy and comfort from me, when it seems like others gain momentum and energy by large groups of people. Sure everyone feels nervous, but I’m not nervous. Honestly, I’m perfectly confident in myself, but I just lack all comfort and energy for some reason – like I’m almost autistic in a way.  Why do I always feel complete overload for the first hour or so in a large group of people and then relax – completely independent of my alcohol intake?

And then it clicked. I figured it out. I figured it out tonight, and it’s a great discovery for the new year.

I’ve always seen things or picked up things that other people never notice. My dad is often the same way.

So here is my theory. When I see large groups of new people, my mind is taking so much information in it just freezes up and doesn’t know what to do. I get uncomfortable and feel like I’m an actor on a stage – like I am not myself. I feel like I have to fake my responses to everything because I honestly don’t know how to relate to someone else when I feel like I am in that overload mode. I have to get away and let my mind process everything I have not yet consciously noticed. I can know something but until I get away and let my mind process it in silence I don’t have confidence in that knowledge.  Once it is processed, I am okay, but I can’t just jump into a situation like that. I can’t do it, without feeling completely and utterly overwhelmed and even somehow bored.

Anyway, then I came home and read this article.

And that describes me to a T. I could not have said it better.

- Josh