Polite

I have several upcoming meetings in the next couple of months. Events with a multitude of people, with accompanying Social Occasions, Mostly, I just have to turn up on time, look thoughtful, and take notes (all of which I can do).  What will be most concerning, I think -- other than the looming spectre of increased responsibility on my plate associated with tasks/outcomes for the meetings -- will be the PEOPLE-ING aspects. 

I have honed my Small Talk abilities fairly well (though they did become a tad rusty during the Pandemic). I can Exchange Pleasantries, and Ask Questions, and Chat. That's not the issue. 

The concern is: will anyone actually want to interact with me? 

What will happen when I'm in a roomful of people whom I don't really know well -- will any take the time to speak with me? Will the onus be entirely on me to initiate conversation? Will I end up alone in a corner with my drink, while cliques of people who already know one another smirk together and roll their eyeballs at me? 

I think about moments in my adult life when someone actually deliberately pulled up a chair to sit and converse with me, and those interactions have been so very rare that I can not only count them on one hand, but I can call each one to mind in detail and recollect my surprise and delight as well as my panicked need to remain casual, as if it was an ordinary occurrence and not a miracle. 

And I inevitably snowball, because I spend probably more time than the average human being, wondering what would happen if I stopped reaching out to the other people in my life: would they notice? Would they reach out to me? Would I... just not hear from them? Would I just be even more Solitary than I am now? 

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I'm embarrassed, frankly, by my level of worry about this. What I can see, though, is that it's all part and parcel of the Abandonment that follows me around. I've contemplated my Abandonment more of late, and the Truth is, I know why it is with me now. I don't want to talk about it in detail, because I do not want to implicate other people who are, after all, just doing the best they can in  their own lives -- and I need to take responsibility for my own reactions rather than to place blame where it may not belong. Suffice it to say: there are a multitude of reasons for Abandonment to take hold in one's life, and those reasons are borne of circumstance and of temperament, fed (often inadvertently) by habits and characteristics of the surrounding people as well as by one's own choices and decisions. All I can do now, is to acknowledge its existence, and then walk with it until it stops whispering in my ear. 

Ultimately, does it matter if I am not part of of the Collective? Why do I want that so badly? Why do I want the love, admiration, appreciation of other people?  What if I am always an Other, an Outsider? I'm still me, regardless of what other people think (or don't think at all) about me. 

And I'm OK. So that will have to be good enough.