I Hate That I Have Social Anxiety
I am not giving up the war
One of my favorite childhood memories is talking with a stranger on a night bus that carried my family and me from Lagos to Abuja. I can’t remember the year or what we talked about, but I remember the feeling of talking with the older lady; she was probably in her twenties while I hadn’t yet crossed ten. I talked a lot to people, never understanding embarrassment or shame. My talking got me into the debate team in primary school, where I argued that teachers were better than farmers. I talked to teachers, headmasters, and food sellers. I talked to everyone, interested in their life experiences, even when I understood very little of what they told me. I asked questions, dug deeper, argued whether I was right or wrong, and for a while I thought studying Law was the endgame of my life. But somehow, as I grew up, fear crept into my spine and took away one of my comfortable skills. It took a long time for me to put a name to it: social anxiety. A name, though, does not always mean identity.
Butterflies are my favorite insects, but social butterflies make me panic, especially when one of them is your mother. Her motto is: you must say something, no matter how silly, no matter who is there, and this makes going out with her a little dreadful. She runs an organization that I have been a part of since its founding, which means I know a lot more than most staff and volunteers who come and go; it also means I represent the organization from time to time. It has been a valuable experience, I must confess: I get to learn skills people pay for for free: report writing, documentation, facilitation. But I am usually the youngest in the room, surrounded by those who’ve been in human rights activism longer than I’ve been alive, and my social anxiety never lets me forget it. Because of my age, I get nominated to lead a group presentation that I cannot refuse; in this line of work, everyone knows everyone, including my mother. I manage to get through them by doing two things: taking off my glasses, since I have myopia — if I can’t see faces, all is well in the world — and projecting my voice as high as it will go. Sometimes it works. Sometimes I stumble on my words and spend the rest of the day rethinking how I could have not.
I talk about being self-aware a lot, to friends, to myself. I usually know my problems, their shape, their size, and weight. I know what I should do to fight them. But I overthink everything, turning each small interaction over so many times in my head that I talk myself out of it before I’ve even tried. There are days I would rather sit with the problem than put effort into overcoming it. It is easier to wallow in regrets about what I did not do than to actually do it. It is not, but it feels that way. I know the solution to fighting my social anxiety is to just talk, regardless of what my head calculates. This is a topic I keep writing about, whether in journals or online: I wrote I Can’t Breathe in 2023, detailing this exact feeling. Looking back, I see the same cycle — feel the fear, hate the fear, pretend it away, retreat into the shell.
In July, I promised myself that I would step on the dance floor at a Charity ball I was privileged to attend. I did not; instead, I made excuses about how my back hurt when I was asked to join twice. I find faults in myself when I step out of the house: I am too out of place, not breathtaking, not elegant, or commanding with my presence. I wear colored hairstyles to make me stand out: “Confidence can be borrowed from what you wear,” I tell myself. Lately, it does less for me, partly because everyone wears colors now, so I blend in with crowds, and I may be outgrowing those looks. I still don’t like black hair, though. If I do not have the colors on my head, what then can be my yardstick for confidence? I pondered this for a while and decided that, rather than think, I would just talk, or just do. That decision is what got me to start conversations instead of sitting in silence next to people.
The first was an old man at church. He is actually the father-in-law of my Texas momma, who I sit beside every week. Before July, I only managed to say hello and goodbye; the words I actually wanted to say stuck somewhere behind them. I always want to know how people live, because my world is a bubble that barely shows me anything. I am of the opinion that meeting people, talking with them, and learning how they lived and continue to live is the best form of education that any formal school can give you. Every time I hush up and shrink into my skin, my heart breaks for all that I would have learned. The last two Sundays were different. I talked to him, moving past the fear that springs up about my accent and pronunciation, and because of that, I learned that, at eighty years, he knows his way around ChatGPT. Like me, he loves photography, and although he does not take photographs anymore, he has a load of old photographs that he uses AI to reconstruct missing parts of, one being the face of a mother whom he has since forgotten. We also talked about the Ottoman Empire, which I have been learning from the book I am reading, and his time in Turkey in 1970 and 1977.
I also talked to two Uber drivers: one from Cameroon and the other born in Texas, but lived in Australia until his marriage ended. With them, I got to learn about their experiences being Black in America.
I’d written about being Black myself, in my first Substack post, but that piece didn’t hold what these two men, who’d lived here their whole lives, gave me in a few minutes. The Cameroonian told me to stay focused. The Texan told me to open my heart to the country. Both, without meaning to, told me the same thing: accept your place here. That is something I have struggled with since 2024. This is what ignoring the fear of talking to people gets me, and how beautiful it is when I come back home and replay the day. Acknowledging my little win, while hoping for more as I continue to work my way out of my problem.
When I think back at the younger me, I have a feeling that she would not recognize the woman I have become. She was not one to shrink herself. She was a girl everyone loved to have around because of the vibe, the agility she possessed in being around others. She is not who I am today; she may never be, but maybe, just maybe, I can be a closer version of her if I try, and when I fall, my new experiences can be the soft landing I need to bounce back again. There’s a birthday I’ve been invited to soon. Maybe there I can test myself again, and maybe it will lead to a day when I stumble upon this writing and tell myself: well done for finally overcoming.
Emmanuella’s Bubble
Reading
I am researching Edo history for my book, so I got a book: Blood and Bronze: The British Empire and the Sack of Benin by Paul Docherty. I thought it would dive straight into the story of the sacking, but it does a lot more. There are things I did not know about the British presence on the continent before the 1880s scramble for Africa. I am taking my time to learn and understand more about the colonial times, and I am grateful for a writer who wrote the truth.
Watching
Yesterday, I watched a Korean movie called Wild Sing; three former K-pop idols come together one last time to perform years after a scandal ended their young career. It is a comedy, and it was to pass the time, but by the end credits I was vibing and crying. They managed to create the 2000s aesthetic of K-pop music videos, and make me fall in love with their songs. I love, tremendously, stories that humanize old people, and even though the characters were not that old- mid-thirties to forties, I assume- the theme was focused on chasing dreams that ended abruptly. I think I will write about it soon as a different post. I would love to know how those over forty feel when they think about their childhood dreams. How can society make it normal for older people to follow their dreams without judgment? What dreams are meant for young people and what are meant for the old? What makes it too late to start or restart what you’ve always longed for? These are the questions that haunt me after watching the movie.
Listening
Stray K…
Don’t worry, I am not mentioning them this time. I have actually been too busy to listen to songs a lot. I did listen to Dwin the Stoic’s Again, because it reminded me of a friend and his out-of-a-movie experience with someone that gave him butterflies. God, when me?
Stray Kids have an album coming in two days, though, so be assured that I will mention them again and again.
Projects
Still working on my short story skill. I have not had much time to sit down to write. Today is actually one of my free days, and I write this at 12:41 am when I should be preparing for sleep because I am to wake at 6am. I haven’t penned a word for my novel rewrite, but I know I am scrapping the 50k words I have. Sadly, I thought the plot would make it into the rewrite; however, fresh ideas have been growing in my mind as I read about the history. I will turn it into a different fantasy book.
Photography
One of my activities to overcome social anxiety is carrying my camera around. Here are some pictures I have taken recently:
Till next time,
Close the door behind you.