Social Anxiety is not actually as fun as it sounds

This has nothing at all to do with being gay or coming out or my fancy rainbow hair for Pride Month.

I just want to tell you a fun little story about the social anxiety few people believe I have.

I'm in Pennsylvania for the summer and had to get a prescription refilled. Since my refill was at a pharmacy in Utah, this involved three phone calls because I didn't know the process. I hate making phone calls, but I put on my big girl pants and did it. Today I realized that the prescription I picked up a couple days ago was wrong (don't panic, anyone. It's just birth control. I'm not dying. "But why does a lesbian need birth control?" *eyeroll* BECAUSE IT DOES MORE THINGS THAN JUST PREVENT PREGNANCY! GO TAKE YOUR VIAGRA WHICH IS ACTUALLY A HEART MEDICATION AND LEAVE ME ALONE! *ahem* Because when I don't take it, I bleed all the damn time. 3+ weeks out of the month. Aren't you glad you asked?)

I digress...it was not a serious mistake, but after consulting a friend, I decided it was best to go have them fix it. To give you an idea of the lengths to which I will go to avoid confrontation/talking to strangers: if I hadn't also needed to buy tissues and batteries, and so needed to go to the store anyway, I probably would have taken the wrong pills and not worried too much about it. But, I did need tissues, so I literally put on pants this time, went to the Wal-Mart pharmacy (don't judge), and explained to the pharmacy tech what had happened. As expected, he told me that the pharmacy in Utah had sent the wrong information. He went to talk to the pharmacist. I waited and ran through all the possible ways this could go horribly wrong in my head, causing my anxiety to increase. I was about to be up to having to talk to two strangers and maybe a phone call. Best case, they said, "no worries" and handed me the correct pills. Worst case, they came back and said I had to call the pharmacy in Utah to fix it. Another phone call. More strangers.

The pharmacist was very nice to me. She said they'd need to contact the pharmacy in Utah, but they didn't open until noon PA time, so they'd give me a call when they'd sorted it out. This was a totally acceptable resolution. Everyone was nice to me and sympathetic. No one yelled or got upset. This was a perfectly normal interaction between humans and probably you're all nodding along thinking "yeah, that went as expected. Why are you telling us this?"

I'm telling you this completely boring story about a completely innocuous interaction because as I walked away from the pharmacy counter, I nearly burst into tears. That situation, which went about as well as could be expected, was so stressful for me that I wanted to cry. That I actually felt tears welling up and did an extra lap around the women's clothing to calm down before I went in search of tissues.

Here's the thing, I'm a friendly human with rainbow hair. Strangers talk to me. Sometimes little kids openly stare and I think that's adorable. I smile and am generally polite. Sometimes even funny. And if the entire conversation goes something like, "I love your hair." "Thanks!" "I'm not brave enough to do that to my hair." "You should do it! It's just hair! Go for it!" and then you go away, everything is fine and dandy. I can charm the socks off a cashier or waitstaff because those interactions are brief and have a defined end. I'm really great at those. If you stay past my 45 seconds of charming, I run out of words, become increasingly uncomfortable, and stop making eye contact. You are now completely in charge of any further conversation and my participation level decreases the longer you stay. I have used up all of my social-ness and do not know how to proceed and am now silently willing you to leave.

But! You're so well spoken! And friendly! And you're not like that around me! You love people!

Yes. These are all true things. Because, probably, you are my friend, and I don't have the same anxiety around my friends. I totally understand why no one believes that I'm an introvert. I'm loud, laugh easily, like to tease my friends, and those 45 seconds of charming are *very* convincing. (Because what if the cute waitress actually IS flirting with me? It would be rude not to flirt back, right?) But if you are one of those blessed extroverts that I so enjoy and surround myself with, and you see a stranger approach me and they stay past "I love your hair", please, please, please, for the love of all that is holy, come to my rescue. I'm about to be out of words.

Don't Tell Me My Own Story

I need to set a record straight.

Tonight I went to dinner with my aunt, who told me this story about myself:

When I came out to my parents, they shunned me and turned their backs on me, so I went to live with my grandparents (and, coincidentally, my aunt). Every Sunday my parents would come to my grandparents' house to have dinner and play cards. Every week my grandparents would regale them with stories of how funny and kind I am and how I'd made them some wonderful meal or was, in general, a wonderful person, until, after weeks, my parents realized their mistake. One week, after not having spoken to me this entire time, they came over, my mother looking very grim, and my father said to me, "we don't approve of what you're doing, but we want to be a part of your life," then, to my mom, "did I get that right?" She silently nodded.

This story never happened.

Here is what did happen:

I came out to my parents while I was in college and they were surprised and disappointed and confused and probably upset. They never turned their backs on me and they never stopped speaking to me. I had come home for some holiday? One of my brothers' mission farewell? That seems the most likely. I came out to my mom in the car on a drive somewhere because she asked me why I hadn't taken the sacrament, so I told her. ("But how do you know you like girls?" "I don't know. How do you know you like chocolate ice cream?" "Well, I've tried chocolate ice cream." "Well....")

Roughly a year later, I sat them down in the living room of their home and told them that I was engaged to be married to a girl. They were not happy about the news, but stayed remarkably calm. Later that night (or maybe the next day, but I'm pretty sure it was within hours) I was downstairs at one of their computers and my dad came down and said something to the effect of, "we don't want you to think we approve of the choice you're making, but we also want to be there for the big events in your life, so we'd like to come to the wedding." My aunt was not there. It was a private and really touching moment (if a little awkward) between me and my dad who was doing his damndest to reconcile his incredible love for me with his incredible belief in his Mormon faith. I think he did a pretty kick ass job juggling what must have been an emotional nightmare. With the exception of my youngest brother, who was in Peru on a mission, my entire family came to my destination wedding. (We got married in Vancouver, B.C. because this was before gay marriage was legal in the good ol' US of A.)

It is true that while we were engaged, my fiancé, Becca, and I lived with my grandparents and my aunt for a couple months. This was a choice Becca and I made because my parents weren't comfortable with us sharing a bed before we were married (a rule that also applied to my three straight brothers) and we had already been living together for nearly two years and weren't willing to stop sharing a bed. We were never, that I recall, given any grief about our choice by my parents. We were respectful of the rules of their house. Once we were married, we stayed with them many times and they never batted an eye at us sharing a bed.

In my aunt's story, my grandparents were heroes because instead of shaming my parents into speaking to me again, they just carefully and consistently reminded them what a wonderful person I am until they realized what they were missing out on. In reality, my grandparents are heroes because they raised a son that loves his children fiercely and would never turn his back on them, and who married a woman who is every bit as loving and compassionate as he is. Even when faced with what to them must have felt like not only a deep disappointment, but also a failure of their faith, they were gracious, kind, loving, and made a conscious effort to welcome my wife into our family. She and I were lucky. No one in her family was able to come to the wedding, but they also welcomed me into their clan with open arms. The world is shifting, but we still live in a time where not all coming out stories have such a happy ending.

But my story is a happy one. No one gets to change that. No one.