Still at the Party and Still in Your Head

People are my job, and some rooms are a lot of room, even for me. A baby shower with forty women you half know is a lot of room. So is a work thing with a name tag.

Does that make me bad at people? Um, NOPE! It means the room is loud. Everyone in it might want something from you, and you’re keeping track of all of them at once. That isn’t shyness. That is a job you took on at the door without being asked.

Everyone else looks fine

The woman across from you looks like she’s having a perfectly nice time. Is she? Let’s be honest, from across the room you can’t tell. For all you know she has her own commentary going: who’s looking, what she said a second ago, how soon is too soon to leave. She can’t hear yours any more than you can hear hers.

So the belief that everyone else at the party is fine rests on nothing but how they look. You look fine too, because everyone looks fine. Me included. It’s practically the dress code.

What makes the room loud

This part is a big one! The noise isn’t the people. It is the watching. Somewhere along the way you learned to read every face in a room for what it needed, and to supply it before anyone had to ask. That is a skill. It was probably useful once, in a house where somebody’s mood decided the evening. At a party it runs on its own. And it runs hot.

By the second hour you have tracked forty people’s moods, adjusted your own forty times, and said nothing you actually wanted to say. No wonder your ears are ringing. You’ve been working since you walked in.

You were already working

That was WORK. It just didn’t look like it.

So, if you want one small thing for the next loud room, try this. It’s optional. Find five things in the room that aren’t people. A lamp with a crooked shade. A plant that is almost certainly fake. Name them to yourself, slowly. It won’t make the room quieter. It gives the watcher in you a minute off. She could use one.

The bigger work is learning where the watcher came from and what it would take for her to stand down. That’s the work we can do together. You looked fine, and you were working the whole time. And honestly, that’s exhausting. When you’re ready, request a time or write to me.

On solid ground,

Acelli