Making friends off of the playground (feelings – sorry)

Dear Alex,

It’s been a confusing past number of months. As you know I started a job, and it’s been a rollercoaster of emotions every other day. The research is exciting, albeit sometimes so outside my own reality of myself I’m taking aback by the fact that I’m at it and making something of myself. I feel like an imposter more often than not. Sometimes people will say things and I feel like, I don’t know what you’re talking about or why you’re here. I try to do my best, I offer my help to anyone who needs it and I try to make myself available no matter what I got going on. But like I said, I still feel so lost. I wonder when that will change.

I led a project last week, it was confusing, I’m worried that it reflected poorly on me. (But then again, as a friend of mine said to me, what doesn’t make me stressed?)

I don’t know whether the way I want to care for people comes across in the way I carry myself at work. I am passionately throwing myself at people I consider friends by filling their inboxes with my rambles and thoughts and music and hoping they will care enough to say something back, or maybe cough back a chuckle in our cubicles, open space, so quiet office. Do I even belong? Some days I feel so suffocated, I walk into the office and I worry about my clothes, my walk, my hunchback, my lunch, the way I breathe and swallow and all I can do is wallow in my anxiety as I choke it back at my desk, my cubicle. Staring at my screen all day with anxiety building and building in my chest.

I thought I had a good week last week, I talked to people, I made some people laugh, I didn’t stare directly at my shoes when I made conversation, I wore clothes that felt comfortable. I ate food, and anxiety didn’t grip me with every bite. I felt normal.

Now it’s midnight, and I’m thinking about whether the people who I consider safe will be in the office and whether they even care that I exist and whether anything that I do has any weight in their lives when every movement has so much weight in mine. I think about staring at the screen and the walk to the office and my trembling hands and our morning meeting and I let it wash over me, drowning me in a bathtub of my own pre-thought waking dreams, actions, decisions.

I’ll make a cup of tea when I’ll get in the office, wait for my eyes to open, pretend like I can’t talk because it’s the morning and not because I’m scared that every word out of my mouth sounds like I’m swallowing cotton balls and choking back on furry moths filling up my throat.

I’ll tell everyone my schedule in our morning meeting and stare at my hands and tug at my sweater and hope that no one looks in my direction with anything other than professional understanding (but god I’m looking for kindness and friendship in their actions and their eyes none the less and it fucking hurts when I don’t find it there).

I don’t know how to make friends off of the playground. I don’t know when they want to play ball or meet on top of the monkey bars or jump into puddles and smear mud into cracks in the pavement. I can see their eyes wandering and never settling and I can feel their stares that pass right through me, and I’m terrified of their every move because I can’t predict whether they’re a friend or a foe or if they hate every move I make on the chess board because I don’t understand the game.

It’s been a long time that I’ve been standing at the edge of the park, staring at the playground forlornly hoping someone will take my hand and lead me towards the swings. (Ha but I don’t want them to touch me I have touch aversion now too, it almost hurts to think about)

I’m hoping for kindness in the shifting glances of strangers that will be nothing to me but coworkers, and I keep drifting further from the swing set.

It’s been a night.

With love, running up the slide in my squeaky sneakers,

Lucia