Okay so like I said in a previous post, last week my best friend and I went to a concert and dyed our hair fun colors (hers purple, mine blue). It was a lot of work, but also a lot of fun taking out our old color, getting our hair white and then dying it the crazy colors.
My hair is still very bright blue/teal and I still really love it. I get lots of people commenting on it or complimenting me on how well it turned out. Aside from 2 of the women I work with, who I can tell have talked about me and my hair behind my back just from the way they act (they can be very “two-faced” to say the least), and my former boss, who told me I look ridiculous, that I belong in a circus, and that she’s glad I don’t work for her anymore (she didn’t actually finish that last thought, but she started it and I definitely knew where it was going), everyone has been very polite to me.
I suffer from a lot of social anxiety. I don’t like talking to people, I don’t like having to start conversations with people, I don’t like being in crowds, I don’t like having to make “small talk” (I don’t even know how), and I definitely don’t like talking about myself or being the center of attention. Just to give you an example of how far my social anxiety goes, one time a friend of mine told me about a great place to get the oil in my car changed. I usually just go to Walmart, wait 2 hours for them finish and then complain about how much I hate getting my oil changed there. So, to save time and money, I decided to go to this other place. Not knowing where it was exactly, I used my phone’s navigator to get to the auto shop. I was so nervous about being in this new space and not knowing what to do, who to talk to, or where to go, I turned around and left.
So I guess it probably seems crazy that I would do something to draw so much attention to myself. But I didn’t really think that far ahead when I was dying my hair! I just thought about how cool my hair was going to look. After we did it, and went out together, the comments started immediately. We went bowling, ice skating, visited a zoo, visited an art museum, and then the concert. There wasn’t a place we went that people didn’t say something. And it was all nice stuff! Compliments and “I wish I could do something like that.” I have been really surprised at how nice people have been to me. And I think it’s kind of good for me.
Having this thing about me that grabs peoples’ attention and gives them a reason to talk to me makes it really easy for me to almost act “normal.” People ask me about it, why I did it, how I did it, etc. And I can easily give those answers, and talk to them back. It’s actually a pretty good conversation starter, and I don’t have to be the one who starts the conversation. Someone says something to me about my hair, I tell them about it, then we go on to talk about other fun/crazy stuff that we’ve done to play with our appearance. It turns into a conversation rather than awkward small talk. I think it’s almost kind of therapeutic for me, sort of teaching me how to talk to people.
Most of my anxiety probably comes from not knowing what to say or being afraid of sounding stupid (and low self confidence from having suffered acne since I was a teenage is probably a big factor as well). Sometimes I’ll say something that I think is funny or that will make people laugh, and nobody laughs, or I just come off sounding dumb. Or people just ignore that I’ve said anything altogether, so I just won’t say anything at all. That’s how I’ve always felt, so I’ve always been the quiet one. And since I never really talked to people, I never really learned how to start conversations, or what to say to people.
But now that I’ve got something that brings people to me, I’m kinda getting the hang of it!
babbling buddy 