"You really should go. It'll be fun!"

Holy shit. Here's one for you.

A few weeks ago I RSPV'ed to a baby shower. I declined. "I won't be able to make it, but I really hope you have a great time!" And I thought that would do it. Why I'm not going isn't anyone's business. If you have been reading the blog here, you know why I wasn't going to make it. I have sworn them off. I hate them. They suck. I hate baby shit. I don't care about boppies and nose sucking devices and little bitty clippers, and I hate what women are supposed to be like at these things. They're dreadful.

But it wasn't enough. A few days later, I was walking by my neighbors' front door and the husband flies out to stop me. I say hello and he tells me his wife told him to grab me, so they could say hello. She comes out, sits down on the front steps, and asks me why I can't make it to her shower. I'm trapped. And, instead of telling her that I hate baby showers, I lie. I tell her I'm committed to a family thing. My sister is in town and I have to go to this family thing.

I should have just told her. I didn't because real, socialized people go to stuff like this . . . showers and dinners and parties . . . because they're supposed to. Because that is what we are supposed to do when we live in society. Right? And the only way you don't have to go is if you already have something else to do. Right?

So, I lied. I thought that would do it.

Then today I opened my back door, not even awake yet, to refill the bird feeder and there was my neighbor's voice from over the fence, "Hello, Beth!" "Good morning!" "Aren't you hanging out with your sister today?" Fuck, I thought. The fucking baby shower and she's fucking watching my every fucking move. "Yep! I'm just about to leave!"

Pleasant pleasant pleasant pleasant. Pleasant all day long.

I WAS just about to leave . . . but not to hang with my sister. She left town a week ago. I needed to go into work and do a graph for next week's meeting.

I lied again.

So I went in to work and did the graph and it didn't take all afternoon. I was done in time for lunch. So I was stuck. Do I go back home where she will see me again and watch and take note and surely later comment? Or do I grab lunch out and just stay out until I know they will be at their fucking shower? I decided to go home, guilt ridden and pissed off that she's so fucking nosey and doesn't get the concept of the Polite Decline and that my business is none of hers. I hoped to sneak in. But of course, the husband was out on the back patio (where they always seem to be) and he, of course, watched me walk into my own house.

Caught.

I ate lunch. I balanced my check book. I listened to the NPR news quiz. Then I decided to leave again and go to the library to look up stuff for The Exit Strategy. That will get me out of the house and they will see me leave again and then it will still look like I have another engagement.

I started to freak. I closed all the blinds. I started to get good and pissed that I ever told this lie to this nosey-assed neighbor, and now I can't have the great and productive day buying plants that I had planned.

I gathered all my stuff for a trip to the library and left. I drove away from my house, (where I should be able to be whenever I choose to be there, God damn it),and I headed for the library. Unfortunately, the library is right next to the neighborhood where the shower is being held, so I freaked out again and turned to my parents' house instead. They are away on a trip.

So, now I'm here . . . at my parents' house . . . with all the blinds closed . . . sitting in the basement hiding because I have to not be caught in this lie for some reason. Like it would have ever mattered to tell the truth in the first place. For fuck sake. And all this anxiety has completely derailed my day. I really thought I would be able to come and go and whatever . . . they wouldn't notice that I was doing my own fucking life instead of cooing over tiny socks, surrounded by people I don't know.

I'm so pissed at myself for lying. I'm so pissed at them for being so watchy and nosey and impolite. I'm pissed at myself that I couldn't go to the library, not because they maybe would drive by just then and see me. That would be ridiculous. But more because I was afraid of what I might find researching The Exit Strategy. And now I'm holed up in my parents' empty house, hiding from my neighbors. The whole day I had planned is ruined. For fuck sake.

This. This is a wonderful example of why I hate people and why I'm so scared of not deploying. I would actually have to admit I live here and I would have to continue to find ways to politely decline. And I would be faced all the time with things I feel I have to do because they are polite in society, but things I really really really don't like to do. Like going to baby showers or attending parties where I don't know everyone.

Deep down, I'm a fucking recluse, people! Always have been!

Or, maybe I'm just going to have to abandon the party manners.

Maybe I need to learn to look people in the face and actually say, "I'm not coming to your party because I hate babies and hate the self obsessed enthusiasm of new breeders, and having to sit around in some stranger's garden trying to look interested would suck what little life I have left in me right out of my body and I would die and turn into a huge pile of bored, disappointed dust, right there in the flower bed."

Is that how real people live?

Or are they dust already? Dust from all those baby showers and bridal showers and little kids birthday parties and work dinners and soccer games?

Today . . . quivering in my childhood house . . . I am so ready to run again. Just leave and live somewhere all alone where I never have to face down this particular anxiety.

The anxiety of saying no thank you when I "really should go."