Possibly the issue is initiation. I know my actual conversing abilities have become richer from all the sitcom episodes I've watched and my sufficient interest in current events (TikTok's been on the line for days now; and just today my brother showed me the way they foreclosed themselves with a full-app notification — terrible design). There are no dumb questions; but there are many overly abstract ones. Better to look dumber than to look smarter. Even my ability to exit a conversation is effortless. "I've got to run, I have a lecture soon." It is getting over the barrier of sitting down and making those minutes of small talk. My god! If I can master small talk — and I know I can, because it is a skill, and this skill is mediated in language — I may not even need to push myself past whatever wall of rock I imagine between myself and a stranger at the bus stop or in the dining hall or in the hallway,. I may become so stimulated with curiosity and vigor I am already talking to the person, without even thinking. I am already in the conversation. I've got to embody a sort of radical curiosity into other people, as if I thirst for the precipitate minutae of their lives. Sasha has thankfully spoiled me in that regard; they talk my ear off, without many questions. But others are more sealed. How many times have I wished for someone to ask me a question, even a simple question? That feeling must be a thousandfold in this forested campus. It seems silly and ungrateful of me that I crave being seen without myself seeing others.
"[Growing up] is hard and nobody understands." // https://www.homestuck.com/story/2391