Fearing People

One thing that took me years to discover is that I’m a little anthrophobic. I just made that word up but what I mean is I sometimes feel I have an inordinate fear of people. Not just shyness, but real fear. Or maybe it is shyness, if shyness can be a bottomless pit deep inside that occasionally prevents a grown man being able to do his job.

As a kid I had friends but I was also the kid that other, meaner kids liked to pick on and it was my friends who, sometimes, stood up for me. This didn’t happen often, but I remember it.

As a youth I was virtually unable to think, much less talk, if within fifty yards of a girl. Yet I had a girlfriend, somehow, throughout most of high school. She was a special case, though, as was I. It was a unique relationship I have just decided I won’t detail here.

After high school for awhile I had two friends in the world, including the ex high school girlfriend. I remember a period of time during which, no matter where I was, if I wasn’t with one of those two I was keenly aware of it; as if they were the only humans I could interact with. Everyone else alive (outside of family) was just too scary.

This was fixed by the brutal method of working at Taco Bell and McDonalds in less than the best of urban neighborhoods. But it took awhile.

Time passed. I distinctly remember one day at my new job as a manufacturing engineer in the medical devices industry, age about thirty four, when I had a simple question – where’s the fax machine, where can I get a lab notebook, something of that nature. What I remember is making the conscious decision to quit looking all around for it and just ask someone. It was like deciding to ford a cold swift-running river rather than go miles upstream in search of a bridge. I steeled myself, did it – and then in a small way never had to cross that river again.

Except I did, many times. But each time, it got a little easier. Easier enough that I still have a job, indeed have not been involuntarily unemployed since my early twenties. So something is going right.

But it never ends. I can’t count the number of one on one discussions I have needed to initiate in order to do my job but that I’ve delayed for weeks at a time. One way or another I get through them, or around them, and my job does get done. But it’s bizarre what a series of roadblocks I create for myself.

Next week I’m traveling with a colleague I’ve only met once. When I did, he was more than six inches taller then me, a manager of vast experience, and though a very nice guy seemed to be regarding me from atop a mountain. An ancient mountain, the kind that lightning-throwing gods used to live on. I knew I had to meet up with him beforehand, but he’s based elsewhere. That meant … calling him on the phone.

And I did but that pit of fear delayed me by a good fifteen minutes. Maybe half an hour, doing other stuff that seemed more immediate. But I faced the music and then everything went perfectly fine. It usually does. There are lessons in that phone calls and meetings and the like usually do. But it’s a lesson I have to learn over and over and over again.

There is a relentless progress under way. Way back when, I was terrified of everyone but two people. Now I’m terrified of no one and only halted by reluctance in the case of strangers I have to interact with one on one in a meaningful way. Groups are fine. Taxi drivers are fine. Thugs on the street (though I haven’t been approached by any for decades) are fine. One on one professional or personal relationships that are new and have some sort of meaningful subtext – not so fine. Not yet. Getting there.

And there are exceptions wherein the Fear never appears. Don’t know why. Maybe it has to do with the stakes. If the stakes are too low to matter, or so high one can take solace in having lost boldly, then no worries. Don’t know. Doesn’t matter. Every days’ new, and often a little bit better than the one before. If nothing else, I can look forward to some day when I interact with the world without fear but simply in the joy of meeting people, and getting stuff done.