Pherammonia

Written in Forsyth Park in Savannah, early 2009.

I like to people watch. I like to see how people relate to each other, how people respond to someone else’s body language, someone else’s voice, tone and articulation. I look at these people and wonder if I’d like to talk to them. I wonder if they’d ever like to talk to me. I see people pass by and usually they have someone with them. Girlfriends, best buds since high school, married couples, young lovers, old couples still holding each other’s hands, or even people with their dogs. Little children. Grown adults. Teens. People my age. And sometimes I see these people and so desperately want them to notice me, to sit down on the wooden bench next to me and strike up a conversation. I feel squeezed out of socializing and sometimes I can’t stand it. And I don’t mean to. I suppose it seems like I’m putting myself in that situation but I don’t come to the park to feel lonely. It’s just actually quite a nice place to visit. When the air is just right and the scent of flowers float around and I can hear far away giggles, inspiration can be found. It’s conducive to writing. But it comes at a cost. I see people together, couples, friends, lovers, connections, and I see that I am all by myself, that I have nothing but this notebook to give myself to and I find that disheartening. If only someone could be perceptive enough to reach out, to sense that separation within me. If only someone would be so kind as to do something about it, to want to seek me out and get to know me. As much as I like to be my myself, there comes times when I don’t want to sit alone, when I don’t want to feel those pangs of loneliness anymore. I sit in a huge crowd of people and know one acknowledges that I’m there and it’s no one’s fault because I’m just a stranger and you don’t go up to strangers and start talking to them. But isn’t that how you make friends? Aren’t we all strangers until one person compiles enough courage to turn a stranger into a friend? I suppose the park isn’t the best setting but I don’t have to just be sitting in the park. I can sit in a classroom or a bar or any general area that’s populated with people and I can go unnoticed, feel a mixture of isolation and desperation. Please, someone, anyone, talk to me. I’m too scared to talk to you so please come to me. If only someone could be brave enough for me. This notebook gets me by but I want to be able to get feedback from someone. I can’t socialize with a journal.

And I wonder why I don’t have more friends. I wonder why the friends I used to have are growing more and more distant. I know it’s my fault but there’s a part of me that feels like it’s not all my doing. Why is it that I can make friends so easily online but in person, I’m just a bumbling idiot? Maybe it’s because I feel safe, protected, when there’s a screen and several hundred miles separating us. It’s easy to put up emotional walls when there are literal ones between us. I’m uninhibited, not caught up in my own insecurities so my mind is free to be funny. I’m not distracted by my shyness or fear that they are judging the way I look or smell or act or sound. Words coming through the screen are sterile. You can inject a certain amount of tone and inflection depending on how you weave words together but all in all, it’s up to the other person to interpret not only what you said, but how you said it and what you meant by it. But in real life, all the signs are there, all the inflection and tone and body language that comes along with conversing and maybe it’s something in how I act that puts people off. Maybe I act weird or maybe I’m just not as bright or sharp when I’m in front of a physical person because all of those insecurities creep in and make me nervous and make me stutter. On the computer, I am in control of how they feel about me through my words. I’m good at playing with words. But when I’m physically in front of someone, all my protection is no longer. There are too many variables, too many aspects of myself that I cannot control. They aren’t just reading my words. They are hearing them, seeing my mouth move, looking at my hands and my stomach and crooked teeth and smelling my cologne and breathe and experiencing the very essence of me. And I suppose there’s one part, or maybe several parts, of me that people just do not like. Maybe my attitude is too unpredictable. Maybe I’m too goofy. Maybe it’s something internal. Or is it something that just naturally oozes out of my pores, like a layer of human repellent? Do I send out some kind of creepy vibes? Is there something about my presence that people consider deal breaking? Is it that my physical face does not match my photographs? Is it that my physical voice does not match my electronic instant messages?

They say that people possess these pheromones that act as a natural attractant to other people. A chemist named George Preti discovered that women with irregular menstrual cycles became regular when exposed to male underarm sweat. There’s been a study that indicates that the right hypothalamus in the brain responds to airborne sexual sweat. It seems there’s definitely something in the air and either I’m immune to it or my natural scent has soured. What is so wrong with me that I can’t connect with people in real life the way I can on the web? Is it the stuff that smells and if so, does mine not smell as sweet as the rest? Do I not have an attractive smell at all? And if the pheromones aren’t missing, then what is? I understand that I do not have the most experience when it comes to interacting with people. I spent all of my teenage years being fat and confined to my room because of the humiliation over my body. I missed out on those crucial years of socializing and romanticizing with people and now I feel out of the loop. I feel so behind that I almost just want to give up. I’ve lived the singular life all of my twenty-three years and now I almost don’t know any different or any better. I’ve never even felt a strong attraction to anyone because I don’t even know what attraction really means to me. I’ve felt so disconnected from everyone for so long that I don’t even know what I want in a friend, much less a lover.

Where is there to go from here? I don't know what I want from people yet I do know I want companionship. And I feel my need is deeper than romantic love. I'm so over that. No, I want that basic human connection with someone else. I simply just want a friend. I can do without romance but I'm not sure I can survive on myself alone. I'm worried that people will continue to slip in and out of my life and I'll never find consistency. Friends will come just long enough to get me by, just skidding along the surface of contentment, until they leave and I find myself floundering again. It's all about that continuing quest for stability in friendships. My foundation has been shaken up so much that I don't know which way is up and I don't know where to turn. And as silly as it seems, I hope against hope, wish although my faith has dried up, that someone will come along and be that stability, that rock that I've been needing to keep me centered. I look for it everywhere there's a crowd, from a class to crossing the street to sitting down on a wooden bench at the park. I look at these people and wonder if I’d like to talk to them. I wonder if they’d ever like to talk to me. I see people pass by and usually they have someone with them. And, just for once, I wish I wasn't the one sitting singularly.