night strangers

i missed truthful tuesday because i forgot it was tuesday on account of the holiday.

- tonight i played guitar and sang in the staff talent show for my school. i love playing music but i hate doing it in front of other people, and as soon as my husband and i moved in together almost 8 years ago, i quit playing my guitar. i really need to start playing regularly again and stop being so self-conscious. he’s had my spit in his mouth; he can listen to me hit some twangy notes. oh, and the talent show went pretty well, even when i messed up the lyrics.

- my kids this year have been awesome and they’ve helped me see a lot of what i don’t know when it comes to history, which is starting to feel like nearly everything. i’m going to start taking classes at the community college regularly so i can answer all of their brilliant questions and make sure i am confident in the story i tell them when i teach.

- i’ll be going home for a week and a half at the end of june and i am equal parts excited and terrified. i love seeing my family and getting to play in los angeles, but i can’t stand the parts where i see old friends and am reminded how much i miss my relationships with people from high school. more than that, i dread having to face how much they don’t miss me and that is yucky.

- i have 480 pieces of paper sitting in my backpack waiting to be graded, and they’ve been there for almost a week. i have to get that done by saturday or i will die.

i’m the kind of asshole that is afraid to apply for a job because i’m afraid i won’t even get an interview while being simultaneously afraid i’ll be offered the job and have to make a decision.

a month ago i went home and made an off-handed remark to a friend about my husband’s fear of walking downhill in the rain. i flippantly said it was his biggest fear, which my friend heartily disagreed could be the case, and it caused me to think seriously about what his biggest fears are. i was able to quickly compose a list, which made me feel good because what kind of wife would i be if i couldn’t tell you the biggest fears of the person i am supposed to take care of for the rest of my life?

upon my return home, i asked husband what his list was, mostly for the purpose of cross-checking it with what i thought his fears were and was relieved to hear i was pretty on the nose. but then i asked him what my fears were and it got interesting because my fears weren’t nearly as quick to either of our minds.

we managed to come up with the dark and the title of this blog: night strangers- anything that makes bumps or appears once the cover of darkness has fallen, from a barking dog to a bump at the back fence or a rustling in the branches in our backyard. but the list seems so short, like much shorter than it should be, because as i’ve stewed on this topic for almost three weeks now, it is slowly settling in that i am afraid of everything. there are very few situations that don’t make my heart rate escalate just thinking of them and many keep me so freaked out that i don’t engage in them at all.

the biggest fear is rejection, though. at least that’s the best word i can come up with for the feeling i have. there are many connections i’ve made in my life, particularly since i got to move around a ton as a kid, and i find myself too afraid to actually function in most of my social relationships. there are so many people i want to make a bigger part of my life, but i am consistently afraid to reach out because i always feel like i’m interrupting them. this anxiety manages to extend beyond just casual acquaintances to people i’ve considered best friends and even my siblings. i joke about having the confidence of a 13 year old boy a lot, but i really mean a 13 year old boy in the thick of his voice changing with a face covered in cystic acne. that just doesn’t fit on twitter.

what i really wish with all of these fears is that i knew where they come from, because they seem baseless and i can’t pinpoint them to moments in my life and say “THAT is why i’m a neurotic asshole who can’t get out of my own way!” i just am.

maybe it’s time to go back to therapy.