Called TOO Friendly too many times

I'm gonna let you guys in on something about me that I don't talk about often.  Possibly because it's not a question most people can put into words properly.


I am a very open person.  Immediately, when I meet anyone... I speak to them as if they are my friend.  As if I'd known them for years and we were finally getting to catch up.  I will smile at you if you look at me... I will hug you if you are crying.  If you are upset I will ask what is wrong and I will listen when you speak.   I am open with anyone... who asks for it, who seeks it... who needs it.


    This action I take every day is a choice.  A scary, terrifying choice.  Naturally I am quite shy.  I'm secluded, I watch and wait to see if my presence is wanted.  "Naturally" this is the way I was created, or perhaps formed by experience.  Since childhood I'd always been the 'fat' kid.  The 'slow' kid.  The one who never spoke up in class even when I had the right answer because I was petrified of drawing attention to myself.  I was harassed in school and I suffered silently for far too long.  The fact that I was a lesbian made  life even harder because I had no one to turn to even if I tried.


One day...
         Just one day I decided to find out what was "WRONG" with me.  Why was I alone.  Why did it seem everyone else could make friends so easily.   What was I not doing that everyone else was.  What did they have that I didn't?    I asked my guidance counselor and she told me something that to this day is still relevant in everything I do.

  "You have to want it. 

 You have to choose to be brave sometimes.

  I know you feel alone, but there are so many other people out there who feel exactly like you do.

 Why not be their friend?"

I didn't get it at first of course.  What other people?  I never noticed anyone else like myself before
And... friends just always seemed to be something that happened.  You met someone... you had things in common and boom... friends...

however...
     That's not really not how it works at all.   People make themselves vulnerable to others to have friends.  They risk getting made fun of and harassed and bullied  to share those parts that they were ashamed to admit and more times than not... they had no reason to be ashamed to begin with.

Over the next couple years I'd made a fair few friends.  Some not as nice... Some that I'll never leave...

but one day...
     I was in highschool.  There was this girl I'd never noticed my whole first week.  I was a senior and she was obviously a Freshman.  I had just transferred schools in the middle of my final year so I did what I had always done.  I walked up to her and said hi.  I asked to sit down with her.  She was obviously petrified by my presence but I sat anyways.  At first it was a little hard because she was afraid to talk but I could tell she wanted to so I just kept coming up with things to ask her.   By the end of the hour I'd hadn't seen her smile.  Not once, until the bell rang.  As she was walking away... I called back to her and told her I'd see her tomorrow at lunch.  She finally smiled.  A real smile.  And just like that she tucked it back in her pocket.  Clutched her books to her chest and went to class.  I had creative writing that day and of course this stayed with me... so I wrote about it.  It was in my writing that I realized something.  I had become the person I wished had been there for me those few short years ago.  That person I had been wishing would walk into my bubble and burst it open.  It wasn't until two months later that I found out she had been contemplating suicide before that day.  That because I had forced myself to be open to her... I got uncomfortable and treated her like we'd been friends forever... I'd changed someone.

     I am a shy and scared person by nature...

 and by experience ... 

But I choose to be so much more than that. 

 And if people...

 if more people chose to be this type of person. 

The kind of person to step outside of their comfort zones and just see all the afraid and lonely people surrounding them... 

they'd realize they were never really alone. 

 They were alone around all the other lonely people. 

 Mainly from fear. 

 So if you see me...

 walk up to you and hug you and kiss you on the cheek and ask you how you are.  

Ask you how your day is and just start walking with you...

 know it's because I care about you more than I care about my fear.