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9:12pm September 15, 2014

A thing I find inexplicably annoying

feliscorvus:

There’s this guy who often gets off the train at the stop where I sometimes disembark to get groceries.

I know he’s just getting off there because he lives nearby or something and I have no sense whatsoever that he is following me or that his actions have anything to do with me, period. I have no doubt that he is just getting of there for the same reason I am: it’s convenient!

Moreover, I have never talked to him and he has never talked to me. For all I know he is a perfectly lovely person and I have no ill will toward him.

In other words, it’s not about HIM at all. It’s more that there’s something weirdly awkward about walking around in the grocery store and repeatedly coming face to face with this guy who just got off the same train as me, and who seems to get to the checkout line at about the same time as me, 9 times out of 10. Like…we don’t know each other but we see each other all the time at the same time doing the same stuff and there’s some aspect of that that makes me feel something like embarrassment. Or like there’s some social rule I’m supposed to be applying but can’t quite identify.

Does anyone have a clue WTF this is? I suspect it might be related to what Donna Williams calls “exposure anxiety”, because while there’s a social component it’s not typical social anxiety and it’s a thing that makes me squirmy on a deep sensory level.

Just signal boosting in case anyone knows?