For those of you reading this, you may not know this but I hate asking questions. Okay, not hate but it causes me great discomfort to raise my hand, to knock on a door, to question my own abilities and what not. I’ve never been big on asking questions or stating the answers. I just never like speaking out loud. I don’t know why. I just don’t.
Unfortunately, this has caused me to miss out on a lot. I never got to know the answers to a lot of things because of my little fear. I missed out on answering a lot of questions and getting that darn participation mark at school. I never learned to properly process my own thoughts out loud.
Well, I have to now. It causes me such pain. I know I’m sounding a bit dramatic but as an introvert and someone who tends to grasp things quite well, I haven’t been having that much luck. Perhaps it has to do with the fact that this whole new work thing and socializing is outside of my comfort zone. Don’t get me wrong, I like actually going to work every day and conversing with my co-workers, but when it comes down to it–I’m really bad at communicating with others. It all sounds great in my head, but when the words come out–yikes!
I begin to stutter, I pause, I give off a blank stare and then get lost in my head where I start to have this little conversation with myself about how dumb I must look, or how they think I must be an idiot or something a long those lines. I become a hot mess.
I’ve had to ask many questions the past few weeks–where is this, how do i do that, where does this go, what does this mean, and will I get better? These things have been coming out of my mouth and I find myself apologizing to my co-workers and other staff about not grasping things as fast as I thought I would. I apologize for asking questions about things I actually don’t know. I find myself having conversations with myself and freaking out about sounding dumb in front of everyone. I need to ask them questions, but I’m scared of looking dumb when in reality I actually need to ask them how to do them or else I’ll never actually know how to. (Sigh)
It’s not that I can’t converse with anyone, I can have conversations with people I have known for awhile, but every time I’m thrown into a new environment I turn into an awkward human who stutters and feels embarrassed all the time. I constantly feel like I’m being judged–even though deep down inside I know I’m not.
Let me put it this way, I’m the type of person to ask my friends on whether my question is good enough to ask out loud–Yes, my fear of public conversation is that bad.
Anyway now with having written all of this, perhaps it’ll get better.
being maarthaa 