A(wful)ckward Situations

I'm incapable of living in this world. But nobody knows this. Everyone assumes I have a confidant grip on life and everything that it entails, but somewhere along the line when everyone else transitioned safely into adulthood, I got lost in some kind of blizzard and bypassed the part where they give out the personal handbooks or something.

Its like in 5th or 6th grade when school took all the girls and boys into sepperate rooms to explain what would be happening to their bodies during puberty. Except everyone had to have their parents sign permission slips and I either forgot or didn't want my mom to know and so I didn't get it signed. I didn't get to go. I was stuck in a room with some other nerdy kids playing Candyland while everyone else was growing older in a way. Afterwards I found out that they had given out little kits to all the girls and little handbooks and all sorts of things on growing up. My friends talked about it but wouldn't show me what was in their little bags. I had that daunting feeling that something terrible would happen to me one day and I wouldn't know how to deal with it. That was a stupid evil day.

The same way I felt in church a couple months ago when the paster started giving out weekly bible reading assignments. Something in me made me refuse to do them and then one day I see a bunch of little gift bags on the stage. Foolishly I thought maybe I'd get one...haha I'm such a dumbass! He started calling out names of everyone who had participated in the assignments. If you did your homework, you got rewarded. After almost the whole church was on stage with their silly little gifts, after everyone around me was on stage, all my friends, but me, sitting, shifting uncomfortably by myself now in the empty audience with only a few other people I vacantly felt the presence of behind me, I felt like I was one of the condemned, the unsaved, unworthy of gift, the damned sitting amongst the holy. If my life were a movie they would cut to a scene in slow motion of the holy people on stage with their gifts laughing and pointing their ungly fingers at me. Haha, how embarrassing for you! We all know you're going to hell now! you can't fool us! HAHAHA! squeals of laughter like pigs, snorting and grunting in a ruckus of mad mad noise. Had I driven my own car to church or had some way of escape believe me, I would've excused myself to the bathroom during the sermon and never returned to that place. Stupid little gift bags.

That terrible feeling of missing out. Or not even that of something totally out of your control but makes you feel bad all the same. Like feeling out of place being invited by someone to a party but only vaguely knowing everyone else. And that night they didn't expect you. Someone brought gifts for all their beloved friends, and who are you? Sitting on the sidelines brought by one of those beloved, feeling like such a dork. Why am I here? Why can't I leave? Smile weakly at someone you don't really know and you can see it in their eyes staring back at you; they didn't expect you there, they feel some sort of embarrassing pity for you. I'd rather be invisible. I'm incapable of enduring this kind of social situation, yet like a curse I encounter it time and time again.

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