Kr5istofer's Thoughts

I have had to take a step back and evaluate why I don't like doing things under some social situations. Why am I apprehensive and socially afraid of some activities? I know the answers, and I think I'm ready to share. In my new friendships I have made over the last year and a half I have been forced to not let myself be included in activities that others find fun. This is an example that I think will help some of my friends understand me. I lived in Pinnacle apartments last year. We had a complimentary weight room, and a hot tub. My friends would always invite me to go hot tubing. I would always say I was busy, or couldn't at the moment. Truth is I have a fear and a very huge anxiety over that sort of activity, and not why many people would think. While I again answered to another new friend on Sunday that I don't go hot tubing because I almost died in one, which is true, (or so it seemed to a young kid at his cousins house) it's not the real reason. A few years ago I was engaged, and she and I shared a lot of the same friends. We all decided to go hot tubing one night, I was way excited, a little nervous, but none the less excited. I changed last, and everyone was already in the hot tub when I got out there. I got in next to Sarah (my fiance) and got close to her. Then it started... Fat joke after fat joke directed at me. Now I wasn't unhealthy, in fact I wasn't fat, I could have put my weight in better places, but I wasn't worried about it at that time. Joel, Chris, Talus, and Amber were relentless. I usually take stuff like that and joke with everyone else, but I couldn't hide behind it this time. These are people that I trusted with my deepest fears, and here they are playing on my personal appearance, something I have always had a hard time with. It was one of the most humiliating experiences in my entire life. Since that day I have not been in a hot tub with anyone else besides the person I was dating. In fact that single experience is why I don't do a lot of things that can present an opportunity for my weight to be made fun of. Someone made fun of me when I was dancing, so I don't do that, and someone made fun of me when I ran, so I stopped running. I wonder if my body would shutdown if someone told me that I look funny when I breathe. What makes me unique in my mind makes me stand out, and what makes me stand out makes me undesirable. The qualities that I have that make me uncomfortable are the qualities I always assume someone is judging me on. I don't think that is right, but I don't think it is necessarily wrong. I know if I looked different I would not be single...