On Being Popular

I have social anxiety. This means that interacting with people freaks me the hell out. 

This was not really a problem at my small high school of 350 kids with a graduating class of around 90. I had some friends. I moved between social groups. It was all good.

But when I became a Sophomore in college I became inexplicably popular, for me anyway.

I joined a pre-law fraternity that year where I met my best friend and my kids godmother. It was the first time I found an entire group of people who made sense to me. We had conversations about international relations and politics. Argued about religion and human nature. It was great.

But these people were tragic party organizers so my friend and I became the social chairs and started to organize all the parties. They became more fun and I started to really enjoy the social aspects of school.

However, these people REALLY liked me and my friend. One or two of these people would take us out and treat us to dinner. They would find us when we were jogging at night so they could join us. We had to plan coffee nights so that we could all hang out in the evenings.They would even call out to us on campus and run over to talk with us while we walked to class.

To say that we had no idea what to do with this attention is an understatement. 

I was completely lost. Why in the hell did these people want to spend so much time with me. I'd spent a lot of time with me and I was fairly certain I was a dork and not nearly this interesting. 

Here I'm going to insert the obvious fact that the way I was raised, my terrible childhood and resulting low self esteem all came into play here along with my social anxiety, which I didn't know I had. 

So people kept coming up to talk with me and freaking me the hell out so I did the most obvious thing to me and became even more introverted.

I started to wear my Walkman ALL THE TIME. I would walk to class with the music up staring down at the ground so that the odds that I would hear these people was reduced. THEY STILL FOUND ME. So I turned the music up louder and took unexpected routes. It was not a normal response. But I'm not normal, so there you go.

My friend and I had regular conversations about why in the hell we were suddenly so popular. We still don't understand.

As the year wore on people took us out to fancy dinners to try and sway our votes for the next year's election. What the heck!

I think college should have like Friendship 101 for people like me, where they explain that this is normal behavior and people are allowed to like me and want to be my friend. It would have helped.

Both my friend and I went away the next year to do semesters abroad so I never reconnected with those friends because it was back in the stone ages when Facebook was just a dream. I still only talk to the best friend I made, but it was a bizarre life lesson.

I think I learned that I could be popular, which is a good thing to know. The fact that there are other people like me in the world and a place where I made sense is still comforting.