Story telling
I talking with a very talkative extroverted person yesterday. I was asking questions, doing that whole thing that everyone tells you to do and the “conversation” was going ok but then as they finished one of the many stories they’ve told a moment of awkward silence happened because we’ve been talking for hours and I’ve ran out of things to say. I couldn’t think of anything.
They then ask me why I’m not telling any life stories. The real answer is I’ve been socially isolated for a long period of my child hood and had almost no friends in high school so the only thing I did was play video games. So obviously I didn’t want to trauma dump and make them feel bad for me cuz that’s cringe imo so I replied by saying “you can ask me things and I’ll answer” and they say “well I’ve been pulling these stories out of my ass” I assumed that what they meant by that is that the life stories they tell just come up naturally to them.
But I don’t have very many stories to tell about my life because of the social isolation and lack of friends. I’ve noticed that almost all conversations have a section where life stories come up and it’s usually the deepest and longest part of conversation but I don’t have much to say of my own. I just ask people I’m speaking too relevant questions/comments about their stories which leads to me contributing very little of my own to the conversation.
How do I overcome this? I feel like there’s literally nothing I can do unless I make up more interesting stories to tell.