Succulents

So I’ll come bearing ice cream, and I’ll come bearing cake! That’s what I’ll do. Yes.

I’ll always be the loudest in the room when we sing happy birthday. Obnoxious, I know, but I don’t know what else to do.

Because I know you didn’t want me here, not really. And I don’t mean in a Hollywood-Movie-American-High-School stereotyped Mean Girl way.

It just wouldn’t occur to you to call me, if it weren’t for the fact that your mom speaks to mine, and this town has only so many goddamn people in it.

Besides, I don’t know that I’d want me around either.

Genetics are funny that way. I see my dad charm his way through room after room full of people. He could walk into a crowd of strangers, and bring home a friend or two.

Me? I scuttle alongside like a chastised puppy. I don’t know what to say, I just never know what to say.

There’s too many rules, okay? Way too many rules.

Just be yourself.

Okay? Okay. Did you know that Beethoven’s Fur Elize has a similar compositional style to – oh, okay, not like that? Cool cool cool. Did you know that the centre of a black hole–

Sorry. Yes. Okay. I’ll stop.

Not myself, then?

The words geek and nerd and dork swim around somewhere in the cesspool of chemicals, half-baked thoughts and memories that is my mind. But that’s not the problem. Even if I couldn’t list every single planet in the Star Wars Universe in alphabetical order, even if I wasn’t an expert on every iteration of the TARDIS console, that wouldn’t make me more palatable to you. Only less, to myself.

Smile more often. Smile at everyone!

So I do. A little too often maybe.

A little too wide maybe.

Nick-Dune-at-his-wife’s-funeral wide. An elastic-band-stretched-till-it’s-minutes-away-from-snapping wide. No? Fine. Cool.

Cool. Cool. Cool.

Here’s the thing. Your advice, your books upon books upon books, your TED Talks - they don’t work on me. I’ve studied every science there is.

People are still the hardest to understand.

I need that on a t-shirt, actually.

Physics >>> People

And not because stars make for better conversationalists. I mean, they’re arguably the worst at keeping up a conversation, in the entire observable Universe. Can you imagine a response time of 4.25 years between texts?

Like, sheesh, Proxima.

Dude.

Get your act together.

And you thought your bestie was a bad texter.

But at least there aren’t any rules on how to talk to the celestial bodies of the Universe. Or, well, if there are, they’re still in the process of being transmitted, on a beam of light that’s yet to hit the earth.

You’re trying too hard. Am I?

I... don’t know how not to.

I saw someone on the internet immerse their succulents in water, and they died.

Every single one of them, dead.

As it turns out, there is such a thing as caring too much.

But that’s just the thing. This girl and I will continue to drown our succulents. Every time. Just because of who are, fundamentally. Because we knew what it feels like to parched and dry to the bone. She and I, we will always bleed love.

I’m not talking about succulents.

They say man is a social animal.

Yep, that’s it. That’s just it then.

I’m clearly just not man enough for this.

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Who is the writer?

Dreamer. Writer. Idealist.

Exasperated, as anyone looking at the state of the world should be. A pseudonym, because, well why not. That which we call a rose by any other name and so on and so forth.

What is this piece about?

It’s a (very dramatic) take, based on someone who’s tried every possible piece of advice on the internet and still can’t get their social anxiety and social ineptitude under control.

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Written by the Exasperated Idealist