I have issues talking to strangers. I'm very friendly, usually, and I seem to fit in at social events. I'm not a hunchback, I don't live under an opera house, and I never greet people penis first unless I've been assured by example that it's kosher. Still, while I will schmooze you like it's my job (and sometimes it is), in the back of my mind I'm secretly convincing myself that you're not listening to me, not caring about what I'm saying, or plotting a way to remove my kidney and make angry love to the wound. I have never been in a social situation in which I believed, right off the bat, that people were interested in and enjoying my company without some ulterior motive. That probably speaks volumes of my self-esteem, but meh. The alternative would be to live like some egomaniacal Donald Trump-esque cockhole who thinks the world revolves around him. Or maybe just being normal, but I don't roll that way either.
I'm putting this entry in specifically for the people who like to be contrary and disagree with me. "Oh Felix, you must be a sheltered/neurotic/insane/sad/CHUD-type person who barely functions in the real world." Yes. Yes I am. But I submit that, whether or not you operate on the same level as I do, you still have a degree of anxiety in a situation with new people, and it's a product of the society we live in. Who in all the world are we conditioned to be more uneasy around than a stranger? And literally everyone we don't know already is a stranger, so we're constantly at the mercy of billions of people that we're assured, from childhood, could all be pedophilic kidnapping terrorist mugger rapist killer thief drunks with poor hygiene. Why the fuck would anyone want to talk to a stranger?
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