Social Anxiety

I'm having a potluck at my house tomorrow. It started as a desire to have a few friends over for dinner. Like, I would have my friends over and cook them a meal and we would sit around laughing and drinking wine and eating delicious food. And they would be like, "You're the most amazing cook ever and such a wonderful host!", and I would say, "Oh, it's nothing."

But then it morphed and I invited a few more people, some people who aren't friends with the people I originally invited and now it has become a mixing of social spheres. Which is something I do a lot. I know quite a few people but they don't all know each other and I like the idea of all the people that I know meeting and loving each other and creating this woven human basket of harmony. But when I actually organize an event all these people end up meeting and having nothing in common except for friendship with me and there are awkward silences and sidelong glances and general confusion. And later someone will lean in and ask, "Who was that [insert description of awkward person here]?" and then I have to explain how I know them and why I like them and why they were throwing bottles in the street or snorting cocaine or whatever and it takes away from the whole melting pot of friends thing.

This culminated my senior year of college when I had a birthday party. It was a great birthday party. Halloween in March. Heidi and Rian came down from Portland and Heidi had this amazing robot costume and it was a general good time. But one person that I happened to casually invite was this kid from my intro art class who was a freshman and awkward and he showed up about an hour earlier than everyone, like we weren't even ready yet, hadn't even poured a drink, and he was wearing a Peter Pan costume. An adult Peter Pan costume. And as the night progressed we realized that he had a crush on me. It was brutal. And there was the inevitable, "Who was that awkward early kid in the Peter Pan costume?"

But I've accepted this is how things are and I'm really looking forward to the potluck tomorrow (it became a potluck rather than a dinner, so I don't actually have to cook very much) and there won't be costumes. We'll see how it goes.