Delicate Steps

Ever had the feeling where you think you need to tread so carefully with someone that you don't really know what to do or say from one moment to the next?

It's how I've been feeling for about the last six weeks, and I think I know why. Question is, do I want to admit it or not?

I can't imagine that I'm unique in saying I don't enjoy making people annoyed or angry when I talk to them. I also would like to talk about happy and light-hearted things, have some laughs and maybe even be philosophical in conversations as I find them more enjoyable than all the down and dirty stuff I deal with all other hours of the week.

That said, I was sitting at home the other night, taking a break from my novel writing, and opened up a chatbox with a friend on Facebook, wanting to say hello and maybe talk for a bit. Nothing wrong with that at all, I'd like to think. Millions upon millions of people do the exact same thing every day and the world has not gone completely off it's tilt yet.

But when the time came to actually write something in that little box and hit "Enter," I froze up.

Now there's a lot of reasons why I did that. One, is I know she is hellaciously busy this week wrapping up her first semester of grad school, which means long nights, high stress and not much free time to do a whole lot of anything.

Second, time-wise I'm three hours behind her so considering how late it was, the chances of a long conversation weren't going to happen anyway.

Those two things I can accept without any issue because it's a fact of life in the 21st Century. People are busy and we have things to do, and if I can't accept that and give those around me the space necessary to do them, then that's on me. I don't have enough hours in the day to get even half of what I want to do accomplished, so understanding that is definitely not the issue.

The issue was I genuinely felt like I was doing something wrong by simply saying the word, Hello.

To my knowledge, there's nothing wrong with saying hello to someone. It's the gold standard of greetings, for Pete's sake, and I've used it more times than I can count in this life. I cannot think of a single reason why my doing so now would be some egregious error in both conduct and judgment.

But as I sat there on my couch, looking at my laptop screen and those five letters waiting to be dispatched into the wide world of the internets, I found myself arguing with the Yang about whether or not it was a good idea. Back and forth we went for several minutes before I finally forced it to shut up and punched the Enter key.

The good news is that I got a hello in return. The bad news is I was totally unsure of what to say next, so I didn't say anything at all for the rest of the night.

I wish it was relegated to conversations, but I've been feeling the same way when it comes to going out, buying Christmas presents for people, and just being a part of things.

I don't think I've ever been so uncertain of where I can or should walk in my life.

That really worries me.