It’s not a long post today.

I openly told someone that I’m socially awkward and I thought I’d talk about it. It’s not necessarily a ‘new’ thing, it’s just something that I am not overly comfortable with doing. Especially when it is someone that I don’t really know very well. 

I offer up that I am gay far more than I would ever consider telling someone about my awkwardness…I mean more often than not my awkwardness speaks for itself, I don’t need to give it a voice. 

I suppose that there is a certain element of judgement on my part in that I automatically assume someone would just brush it off and tell me to stop being a proper fanny. 

There's also the risk of rejection there too perhaps. I didn’t really realise how focal rejection weighs in on awkwardness. 

So this is someone I work with, a relatively new member of staff. He’s French and in his late 60’s and I happened to be helping him one day this week once I’d finished my own work. 

Now, I currently work night shifts for a specific reason: There are less people. Again as I have stressed in past posts, I do actually  like people. I just have limits. 

So, I start working and he approaches me and immediately is talking, not continuously but consistently. I respond and it is within only a few back and forths that I’m noticing the depth of the conversation is different. It isn’t surface level, moaning about the job. Not that there is anything wrong with those types of conversation, at all. It’s just that those seem to be the majority of conversations I seem to have with colleagues.

He started speaking to me about art and then we spoke about writing, also politics which I don’t normally entertain at all ‘cause it’s a fucking minefield. I think this was more about energy than anything else. 

I don’t know if he picked up on mine or what but he suddenly stopped and said,

“I’m talking too much!”

Normally I would jump in, quickly reassure and then try and overcompensate and talk more far more than I was comfortable with. I found myself very quickly jumping to reassure him he wasn’t but that I may appear reserved sometimes because I struggle socially and can be awkward. 

He smiled knowingly at me and nodded. No judgement there. Acceptance. 

He said, “That’s OK, I can see that.” 

Then later he said something, slightly out of context as the topic had moved on:

“The French, we have a saying; we all have the same asshole.”

It made me burst out laughing because my literal brain and crude humour heard it and thought 

“Ew!”

But then I thought, he has a point. We may not all have the same starts, experiences but no one is above anyone else. 

We don't give people enough credit sometimes in that they can hold the weight of the information we give them. When we show little pieces of ourselves. 

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