My Life with Social Anxiety

What do you think of your friend abeegail" a classmate asked.
He stood up in front of the classroom and said "She's actually very boring, she has nothing to say that is interesting at all". The silence after that was something I would never forget. I shot my eyes tight and hoped and prayed that it was a bad dream but who am I kidding my worse fear had come true.

Hi, I'm Abeegail, welcome to my blog, I'm a teen who loves writing, poetry and whatnot, let's talk........ about social anxiety. When I tell people I'm introverted or socially anxious, they will say "well stop" or "just change" and I used to find it very offensive because most of the time I don't want to be introverted, I just am. But now I understand that they don't understand because they just can't put themselves in that kind of situation.

The way I was raised was the kind of "don't talk unless you are talked to" and because of this I became the quiet girl who talks to herself and keeps to herself and I particularly didn't see anything wrong with it until, my friend made that statement and then I realised that I couldn't keep one on one conversation with someone. I became so self conscious that I would dread meeting anyone new for the sake that I might come off as boring. I had serious imposter syndrome, I thought everyone hates me or that I don't fit in anywhere. I would over analyse every single statement which in turn made me make mistakes that I would get embarrassed of and just made everything worse. I started to self isolate because I felt meeting people was risky. Although I'm getting better but thoughts like this still resurface once in a while.

Social anxiety isn't just shyness, it's full on panic attacks when you want to meet someone. It's the sweaty hands, the sinking feeling in your stomach, the irrational thought of you embarrassing yourself, just because you want to say hi to someone. It's actually crippling, I missed a lot of opportunities and great friendship because I allowed anxiety to overwhelm me. I think my social anxiety came from a place of trying to place a particular image of what I want other to see me as. So I'll try so hard to be anything other than boring.

One thing I like to tell myself is " Don't be nervous, they are just people" and indeed they are just people like me, and most time I try to fight it, get into more social interaction and doing nothing special than just being there, starting small, like saying my name, just trying to look people in the eye, telling myself that it's not so bad. I realised that I'm not here to entertain anyone, it's not my duty to make anyone's life interesting, I'm just here to live my life as freely as I can.

Now I'm not the most outspoken or most confident person you'll ever meet but at least I'm not that girl who mind if she said something off. In fact I love being seen a weird or as boring, I don't really care, because at the end of the day it's my life and it is me that would feel the regret of not pursuing a life of happiness and relief.

It's still Abeegail ✨💗