I found out this weekend that one of the other bridesmaids didn’t have their ears pierced either. This was basically my reaction:

I wasn’t alone!

Yes it’s a personal choice to not have my ears pierced and I’ve never really wanted to get it done (though I did get my eyebrow pierced back in college which eventually got closed up later on but that’s another story). But it was one of those moments where I didn’t feel like the odd man out anymore.

I walked up to a friend during the reception because he was standing in the corner alone. I was slightly worried that he wanted to be alone and I was intruding. This then became the conversation:

We’re both extroverts so we recharge being around other people. When we’re in our comfort zone with people we know and are close with, we are good to go. We act crazy, are very social, and we’re not afraid to be awkward. But put us in a situation where we only know a few people and it’s a larger crowd, and we shrink. We can’t really go up to people we’ve only met a few times because once you’ve exhausted the same conversation over and over again there’s only so much you can talk about without prompting from the other person. It’s hard to go up to someone you know very well when they are in a conversation with other people because you feel like you’re intruding. Everyone has their own little groups and there’s only so much standing outside of the group nodding that you can do before it gets weird. It’s easier when you are at a table and it’s more confined because you can focus better with the smaller group.

‘I certainly have not the talent which some people possess, of conversing easily with those I have never seen before. I cannot catch their tone of conversation, or appear interested in their concerns, as I often see done.’ – Fitzwilliam Darcy

Instead what you typically end up doing is going off by yourself, most likely with some beverage in your hand, to keep yourself busy while you scope out the crowd and recharge while you make your anxiety calm down a little. You’d like it if someone comes up and strikes up conversation even if it’s someone you don’t know, but when it’s one of your close friends it’s even better when they understand how you felt. So yes, he was thankful that I had come up to him to talk. .

After hearing him say basically everything that always runs through my mind in large social events, my reaction was this

It really makes you feel better when you find out you’re not the only one who feels certain way. When everyone else around you seems like they have it all together and you wonder if something’s wrong with you or if it’s just all in your head, finding someone else who has those same fears and anxieties makes you know you’re not alone and it’s going to be ok. There will always be people who can’t understand you but when you find someone who does, it’s always a win.

“Friendship is born at that moment when one man says to another: “What! You too? I thought that no one but myself . . .”- CS Lewis