playground tactics

in recent times a friend said to me in a confessional moment that they are always kinda surprised that their closest friends would actually want to be their friend, asking, "why do they like me?" i had to agree i felt a similar anxiety...

then another friend observed in me a characterstic assumption of threat from strangers...

another explored their need to be honest with people they don't like and tell them they don't want to be their friend rather than just avoiding them...i heard conflict and potential threat...

i struggle with the dynamic of social groupings. once we're all seated round the table i'm happy...but the process of getting there is something i'm increasingly recognising i find difficult, and i have an instinct to take a step back as soon as there's more than one person to deal with in a social arrangement. it's amazing what anxieties you can disguise...and it's amazing how easily you can be misread, misunderstood...

question of the day:

do we ever leave the school corridor or playing field, or are we destined to relive over and over the expectation of being picked last for the team, being bullied, being the whipping boy (or girl) of the gang?

i, for one, am always on some level waiting for the axe to fall...being single has brought to the fore social anxieties that were easy to overlook or ignore when in a pair...

and if i am gratitudinal it's perhaps because i struggle with self belief, connecting and trust... that's not a request for pity or encouragement, but simply meant as an honest admission...to realise that one assumes rejection as a foregone conclusion is a disturbing one... as much as it is a hard reality that the only way beyond that is the daily grind of learning to trust... but even harder is knowing how...

::

for every anxiety, there is a hidden wish

trust is a risk disguised as a promise

::
as i wrote the above, in the back of my mind i was thinking i'll cheer this rather depressing post up by sticking on a picture of a meerkat. jayne and i went to see Junebug tonight. we both really loved it. it features meerkats... by coincidence, during the winter it was suggested to me that if i were an animal, this is what i'd be... a little on the scrawny side and always nervously on the lookout for predators, whilst part of a social group known as a mob? yup. sounds about right...



Suricata suricatta

LB,x