Kelly Hawes, “A Party of Women”
I attended a friend’s birthday party yesterday. It was a spa party, with manicurists and a couple of massage people and lounging by the pool and lots of women. I am always uncomfortable in large groups of women. The expectation to make small talk, the desire of other women to get to know you somehow, as if in a few moments you can really get to know someone. It would take me many hours or days to explain a lot about myself, and whatever I can say in a few minutes is really nothing that will tell anyone what I am like, only what I am like in that particular moment, which is probably, uncomfortable. On the other hand, I’m pretty good at assessing other people very quickly, which probably just makes things worse. By the time I’ve figured them out, they are left wondering who the hell I even am. Being complicated is not an easy thing, ever. And I am quite slow to open up about myself, now even more than in the past.
After being dumped by the one really good woman friend that I truly trusted a couple years back, I’ve found it extremely hard to trust women again, and large groups of them just makes me that much more uncomfortable. I had other friends I thought were close, only to find them all seem to fall away as I became even more withdrawn from needing or desiring their company. I’ve reverted pretty much to being a loner in the last couple of years since being hurt by people I thought were friends.
Most of the time this doesn’t bother me. But to be surrounded by so many women who were friends of one of my few remaining friends felt strange. There was a mix of desiring to get to know people better and wanting to hide myself away. Not really out of fear, but out of that desire to not be hurt anymore by becoming close to someone only to find them resent or fear the way that I come to love and care about people, which as one past friend described it was “too intense”.
I know in my head that a lot of that intensity was due to the bipolar disorder, which makes desire an incredibly powerful force. But a part of it also seems to be built into the way I am wired, into the very fabric of my being. Even now, learning detachment, knowing how to love but also separate my desire for attachment, I still feel those feelings, that wonderful lure of emotion that draws me so strongly to some people, and I want to be intrigued again, to care deeply, to surround myself with interesting, exciting, stimulating people who make me laugh and cry and feel so deeply. The watcher in me is content to sit back and watch, to observe, and not need to feel involved. But the lover in me, that person who scares other people away, is feeling lonely. And I am not sure how to let her out to enjoy life in that way again, without the sorrow of the regrets when people walk away.
4 Responses
Oh, what a sad entry. I am sorry you’ve been hurt so badly. I hope you find a way to open yourself up again — to experience those deep and wonderful feelings. There is always risk of hurt (trust me, I know about this), but, in my humble opinion, the opportunity for friendship and even love so far outweighs the pain of the inevitable hurt that one must push ahead. It’s like that saying: Love like you’ve never been hurt; Sing like no one is listening; Dance like no one is watching”.
That being said, the party sounds like a great idea! Manicures and massages. ::sigh:: My kind of party (and, like you, I really do not do well in crowds, especially crowds of people I do not know well).
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