Avoiding People

theglasscell · Aug 25, 2013

Tonight I was supposed to go to this dinner for my friend's birthday, I was looking forward to it all week and I just woke up after work last night feeling totally anxious like I couldn't stand to do anything social.

I just ended up staying home and riding my exercise bike for a while and I didn't answer the phone or texts from my friends.

Now I feel like a jerk for flaking out on them.

It's weird that I feel lonely and come on a forum for lonely people and then I do things like that and purposely exclude myself from being around people.

The only reason I can find is that I'd be going out every weekend and working overtime the last month and my apartment was getting to be a terrible mess, I was also falling behind on working on my writing.

Sometimes it feels like you overextend yourself socially and that it can be good to have some alone time. I don't know.

I just feel like I should have showed up for my friend at least for a little while and I was being selfish.

I get so confused about things like this, never knowing if I used the right judgement or not.

Tiina63 · Aug 25, 2013

I have found that one of the paradoxical things about loneliness is the way that it sometimes makes us back away from social events. Like most people here I am deeply lonely, yet when the chance of a social event comes up, I often have to really push myself to go to it. I don't understand it either, but I wanted to let you know that you are not alone in feeling this way.

Superfly47 · Aug 26, 2013

You probably think about the upside of going during the week, but you think of the worse when its time to go.

I'm the same way. A couple times I was excited about something, then realized its in a couple days and start to get anxious.

Azariah · Aug 26, 2013

Get a dog. Seriously, start with man's bestfriend. I started with ants. If you can get along with animals, you can get along with people.

ladyforsaken · Aug 26, 2013

Hey theglasscell, I'm sorry you had to go through that. :\
It probably wasn't very easy for you but try not to beat yourself up too badly for it. Take it as something to learn from? The next time it happens, at least you can try to compromise, by showing up for your friend but not stay too long for it? Say you have to leave at a certain time? So while you don't tax on yourself to be there throughout the whole night, you also get to be there for your friend? I do realise this isn't exactly being very straightforward... but I guess it might work?

theglasscell said:
Sometimes it feels like you overextend yourself socially and that it can be good to have some alone time. I don't know.

And yes, I agree with this. It is good to have some alone time. To have that balance.. doesn't apply to everyone though, I don't think.

theglasscell · Aug 26, 2013

Thanks Ladyforsaken.

I did end up going to a movie with my friend today and getting dinner. That was cool, sometimes just going to big things with a lot of people is too much for me.

But I feel better today.

And later I ran into the guy who they had the party for yesterday, he was going on forever about how he is trying to date these three girls we know at once just in case one doesn't work out and he's been going on about that for weeks now, which is probably a big part of why I avoided going to the party in the first place.

So I actually feel like missing out last night and being on my own was the best idea in the end.