The SAD Truth

I think my introversion is a problem.

I follow a group event called Nerdnite, which is a social event for intellectuals, integrating academic-sounding presentations and beer. The Boston area event is held on the last Monday of the month at a bar in Cambridge. And every month, I find a reason not to go.

When this month’s presentations were announced last week, I perked up. The first presentation was entitled, “Wake, REM, Light, Deep, and WTF: A Savage Journey to the Heart of Sleep and Dreams” and knowing my fascination with dreams, you can bet I was intrigued. The subject matter of the second talk was the kicker, though: “The Neurobiology of Zombies.” Now, I want to say for the record that of all the movie monsters, zombies scare the living bejeesus out of me. I was the kid that could not watch Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” without whimpering into a corner and I am the adult that watched all of AMC’s The Walking Dead in the middle of the afternoon. Let’s just say that I have a very active imagination and zombies are a perversion of the human form… it’s a little too close for comfort, much the same reason I will not eat lobster in the shell. But I’m off topic. What I was trying to get at is that I was curious to hear someone’s theory on zombie brains, because in my own rational manner, I would challenge that they don’t exactly have a nervous system.

My point is that I was interested in the talks, and slightly less interested in the proclamation of “nerd appropriate music,” so I put out feelers with people I know in the area as well as on Facebook… does anyone want to check out Nerdnite on Monday? And guess what? Apparently, I am the only nerd among my friends apart from Mr. Horror, who, to my chagrin, had to work tonight. And this is when Cat Muldoon takes the “I” in “INTP” to the next level. I am a nerd, a nerd who desperately wants a social life, but I am a shy nerd who is not familiar with Cambridge and I expect that if I were to go, I’d feel so uncomfortable that I would just leave anyway.

I think affectionately of my friend Lily, a loud, opinionated Southerner who came to New England because her ATF-agent husband was stationed in the area. One evening a few years ago, a group of us got together in Boston for an evening of drinks, theater, and dessert. Lily, who is on her second marriage, quipped that the reason the rest of us were unmarried was because we were afraid to talk to anyone. In all fairness, she was referring to asking directions to the theatre, but I sometimes wonder if she wasn’t right. And then I remember one of the worst, most embarrassing nights of my life.

Before entering any new social situation, I compulsively flash back to myself at 15 years old when I had been invited to Maybelline’s Sweet Sixteen party. Maybelline and I went to kindergarten together, but I had attended another school district since first grade. In the weeks leading up to the party, I was completely excited to go, even though I didn’t know anyone. I was excited up until I got to Maybelline’s house and realized that I really didn’t know anyone and I wasn’t familiar with the mores of the kids outside of my own school, and that no one was the least bit interested in talking to me. I don’t like feeling like an outcast and being eyed suspiciously by cliques, so I spent the entire night alone in the living room watching bad Friday night television and listening enviously to the party going on downstairs until my mother arrived to drive me home.

It is by reliving this painful memory that I invariably talk myself out of going to a club alone, or going to a party where I know only one or two people, or traveling to Cambridge to hear the zombie talk at Nerdnite. I usually don’t mind being alone, or even being alone in a public place, but the thought of being alone in a social place incapacitates me. I just feel better when I have a wing-man or a wing-woman. And this forces me to acknowledge that my dream of going to New York is just a dream. For all of the things that I envision experiencing there, I know I wouldn’t be able to comfortably take advantage of them… I don’t have the support network. I didn’t socialize in Portland, I don’t socialize in Boston, and I wouldn’t socialize in New York.

It occurred to me that I may suffer from Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD), so I did a bit of research. Without wanting to self-diagnose, it seems as though my fears escalate in interpersonal situations, such as starting a conversation, attending a party, going on a date, and (yes, Lily) asking directions. Interestingly, my reaction to performance situations, such as voicing an opinion or giving a public speech, is quite relaxed in comparison. I also took two versions of the Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale Test to gauge my own anxiety level. My responses generated a score of 73 on the first test, which classified me as having “marked social phobia” and 62 on the second test, which was listed as “typical of persons entering treatment for the generalized type of SAD.” Really? My score was lower on the second test, but my diagnosis was more severe.

I am not convinced that I need formal treatment, especially not the kind of treatment that is pill-shaped, but I do think that if today were December 31, I might be tempted to make my first ever New Year’s Resolution. It’s clear, particularly after putting this all into writing and sobbing over the memory of Maybelline’s party, that I am compromising my quality of life and my enjoyment of a significant portion of the world because I am socially discomfited. And that needs to change. I don’t yet know what I need to do, I don’t know how long it will take, but I am making a public declaration that I am going to find a way to tackle this fear… if I am unable to eradicate it, then at least to lessen it. Because, maybe, that’s what this New York fantasy is all about, in its essence.