This is not a rant. The school year is over for me, so I have until early August to see how I can be better to myself and those around me. I feel as if I’m not as social as any of my peers. I get called emo a lot because of my long hair so I’m thinking that maybe that sets people off from wanting to talk to me? I also feel pretty off-putting, (fat, naturally smell bad) so I don’t blame anyone for letting that offput them. I also can’t start conversations. If someone I don’t know tries to talk to me, it feels like they’re being forced to, which leads me to talking in short one-word responses.
I would prefer not to, but I feel like if I say more than is needed it’s just inviting another bully. Not that I have serious issues with being bullied, it’s pretty minor for what happens, it’s just happened enough to cause worry. I’m already planning to lose weight and get a haircut, so I look happier/more open to conversation. That won’t make talking any easier, so how can I work on my social skills without feeling like a creep? I feel like if I’m talking to someone, I’m being a burden on them.
I want to make anyone I’m talking to feel like I’m interested in the conversation. I will be interested; I just don’t know how to show it. I want to make them feel like I care about them, but I have a tendency to get in my own head about things, so it’s hard. I understand that empathy is a basic human trait, but I’ve always been introverted/antisocial during school, and I have no way of meeting people out of school. I do want to be a good person to talk to, but I don’t know how to learn how to talk to people. I feel behind from everyone else, as they’re all extroverted smooth talkers but I can’t even start a conversation.
I know that working on myself will make myself a more desirable conversation partner, so I am working on myself to hopefully be average by august. I’m also in two extracurriculars; band, and robotics. I was in band last year, and it doesn’t inspire much social interaction in me, but robotics is an activity that requires communication. I hope I’ll get better at talking to people through robotics, but I still need work.
I need more popular hobbies to talk to people about, that aren’t just consuming media. I’m currently into playing instruments and creating music, but I feel annoying if I bring them up, because I know there’s ten other people in the room who said the same thing. Or at least I feel like there is. I think one problem is that I don’t think of myself as positively special. I can be negatively special, but on the positive side it’s all kind of average. I in general feel very unneeded/replaceable but that’s unrelated. I also in general need more to talk about. I don’t keep up with any news/social media stuff, so I feel like I end up talking about the same few things, and that’s not interesting for anyone.
If you read through the entire thing, thank you. If you didn’t, no problem.