Does anyone?

Does anyone really like to shop for groceries?

I think I did when I first moved out on my own. It was a freedom and a challenge: I could now eat whatever I wanted, whenever, as long as it fit into my $10/hour budget.

Now, though, ten years later, grocery shopping has become another chore on the list of things I need to do to survive as an adult. And when I started showing symptoms of fibromyalgia about two years ago, shopping for and eating food became complex and anxiety inducing.

I have seen the following doctors between late 2015 and today:

• sports medicine specialist
• physical therapist
• psychiatrist
• therapist
• primary care doctor
• neurologist
• allergist
• rheumatologist
• sleep doctor

Almost every single one of them has had an opinion of what and how I should be eating.

Here are the things I've been told to avoid:

• sugar
• dairy
• gluten
• soy
• eggs
• nuts
• shellfish
• carbs
• calories
• preservatives
• chemicals
• caffeine
• spicy foods

Here are the things I've been told I should eat:

• Meat (even after stating I'm a vegetarian)
• spicy foods
• honey 
• juice
• specific fruits and vegetables
• probiotics
• All Of The Supplements
• Food cooked by a personal chef that I'm supposed to hire

It's not totally obvious from these lists, but a number of foods on both lists overlap. Also, if I followed all of the advice from every doctor, there would actually be very little left in the world for me to eat.

So grocery shopping and eating have become a complicated, exhausting, and expensive dance that I never asked to be invited to. 

When I started feeling consistently low energy and in pain toward the end of 2016, I stopped counting calories and thinking about weight gain for the first time in my life. I tried to just eat when I was hungry; to eat what I knew to be healthy, eat what I knew would make me feel good, and to not waste my precious little energy deciphering whether or not the food that I could afford to buy met the stringent criteria I'd been given by various doctors.

Then, of course, came the "If you lost weight you'd feel better" and the "You should be exercising more", even though the weight gain was a side effect and came after everything else that was going on. The expectation seemed to be that I should somehow still have the ability to maintain the active lifestyle I used to have before fibro kicked in while also figuring out a complicated diet plan, readjusting to work so that my job wouldn't drain all of my energy, keeping my house clean, continuing to see friends, etc etc.

Does anyone with a chronic illness really ever figure out how to manage and balance everything? I'm only at the beginning of my journey and I hold out hope that I'll find some combination of suggestions and advice that works well for me.

In the meantime, I'm going to continue ordering these high calorie, carb-full vegan meal boxes I've been getting because they are infinitely better than trying to think of and shop for what to make on my own. 

I just want to live.

There's a lot going on behind the myriad facets of my blood and medical phobia: in seeing others' wounds there's over empathizing with their pain; in witnessing a medical emergency there's a fear of being unable to help; in getting an MRI there's a feeling of being trapped.

I've been in therapy for a long time dealing with generalized anxiety, depression, and some trauma related stuff. What's interesting is that, as I've healed from the wider reaching problems, my panic in relation to blood, injury and all things medical related has become significantly worse. There are two reasons that I can currently think of why this might be: 1) I'm becoming more in touch with my feelings overall and 2) I really, truly, wholeheartedly want to live as long as humanly possible in a way that I didn't during the first 20 something years of my life.

In some kind of comedic timing, my improving mental health was also met with worsening physical health, peaking with a current diagnosis of fibromyalgia. In the larger scheme of things, fibromyalgia (or at least, my version of it) is fairly mild, manageable, and generally not life threatening. Combined with a phobia, however, the symptoms and effects of this chronic illness are maddening.

In these early stages of examining all of the symptoms to make sure that there really isn't anything more sinister at play, I find myself reflecting frequently on my own mortality. When I'm short of breath, I begin to imagine that I have tuberculosis. When I have trouble falling asleep because of my pounding heart, I'm convinced my heart will stop while I'm sleeping. When I struggle to push my stiff body into a standing position, I expect to hear my bones crack irreparably.

All of this comes together into a constant, electric cacophony of anxiety over which I scream, "I just want to keep living". 

I've been convinced that I don't want to die ever since a near death experience I had about 8 years ago. Before that, this belief was questionable. I tended to waiver between indifferent, wanting to sleep forever, and being okay where I was that day.

Comparing this past to my current situation sometimes makes me furious: I finally really, truly want to live and I am suddenly daily reminded of how fragile life is.

I believe it's finally time for me to face this phobia head on: to lower it's volume so I can hear the more subtle notes in the discord. Underneath the daily balance of life and death that we face as humans, I think there is a beautiful waltz; a delicate dance of being able to appreciate what I have without obsessing over losing it; of seeing this chronic illness as life changing but not life ending.

In movies and books a serious illness tends to lead to the story's hero taking some kind of life changing adventure that inspires them to live better. All I really want from this fibromyalgia experience is to find some grounding in reality; to be able to acknowledge the changes in my body without sensationalizing them. I'm strong. I know I can handle this. I just have to convince the rest of my body that it can, too.

Building Up

This is an edited version of something I hand wrote in my journal this morning:

Over the past year or two I've gradually become more aware and open to emotions that are fairly new to me: joy, contentment, happiness, self-love, compassion, wonder, and curiosity, among some other, more complex permutations of aliveness.

With this opening other new things found their way in too: memories of trauma, a PTSD diagnosis, increased sensitivity to how other people and especially animals are feeling, a more urgent blood and medical phobia, and physical pain.

No wonder humans love to numb themselves.

It seems that healing has helped me feel more alive and allowed me to start facing the things that contributed to my feeling numb in the first place. Depression and fear were walls between me and joy. They also let me hide from things I wasn't yet strong enough to face. As I've healed, I've learned to love myself, including being thrust into learning to love even the parts of myself that are excruciatingly painful.

Lately I often feel raw, naked and exposed, and I wonder why people don't run away in horror...why I don't run away in horror.

I'm in a place where I am successful, often content, proud, motivated, and purposeful. In order to get here, and to stay here, it seems I am having to recognize the parts of myself I've been ignoring. Without those parts, I can't move forward. I can't live as only part of a whole person.

It's like I was cracked open, broken, put back together quickly before anyone could gawk at the mess, and then carefully taken apart again in a safer time and place. Now I am sorting through the pieces, cleaning out the unhelpful stuff, figuring out what's Me, and working to put it back together again in a way that is beautiful and makes sense. It hurts, and at the same time, it's exciting and invigorating.

It's like cleaning out the infection I've been carrying around for decades in an old wound.

I hope this helps someone else to hear this.

The Thing That Did Not Kill Me

NaPoWriMo 2017 #19

It held on as a blinding tumor
Clouding my right eye for two years
Before I ran off to the desert
In search of healing.

When they removed the tumor
What I saw stopped my heart:
A flash, all at once, all of it,
I understood the gift
Of being half blind.

I'm thankful for the fake re-death
Induced by merciful drugs
By angels holding bed pans-
I'm grateful for gradual re-awakening
In this starched white hospital bed.

Therapy

NaPoWriMo 2017 #17

My entire life had been a school for therapists:
A secret school, the teachers hiding,
Leaving notes and tests and homework
In painful places, stacks of textbooks creating
Scaffolding for office buildings
Where I'd one day sit on the other side of the couch
Not comfortable, but familiar.

Too Much Self in Self-Care

I recently asked for feedback on Facebook from my peers in the behavioral and mental health fields regarding self-care. Self-care is quite a buzzword for us. We attend trainings, take classes, make charts, and read article after article about remembering to treat ourselves, find time for ourselves, eat chocolate for ourselves, etc. etc. So we have plenty of information about HOW to perform self-care. I wanted to know if it works.

Some of my friends and co-workers responded that the typical exercise, nights off, and massages work for them (I know, I think they're lying, too!) But there was also a plethora of "eh, kind ofs"; people who said they're still working on it, and even a couple of hospitalizations (yes, more than one!) In my own experience, I'm surrounded by people who are tired, worn out, and stressed. Personally, I don't find massages, manicures, and hot baths to be enough. I feel like the current zeitgeist in self-care is putting too much emphasis on the self and not enough emphasis on our surroundings.

We are already doing so much! Sometimes taking time out to drink tea and paint my nails begins to feel more like an obligation, and one that won't really accomplish anything in the long run. After my nails dry, there will still be trauma, large caseloads, constant changes, and meager budgets, and I still feel tired.

I've tried to start doing things that really feel like they're accomplishing something, making a bigger difference, and possibly changing some of the things that cause me stress in the first place. I know I can't completely change the field of social work so that it's not stressful, but I can take action so that I'm not shouldering so much of the stress.

So here's my list:

• Doing absolutely nothing. In a field that expects so much, in a country that values production, in a home where I keep trying to bring Pintrest to life, flopping on the couch for a couple of hours and raising my middle finger to responding, cleaning and creating feels FANTASTIC.
• Setting boundaries both at work and in personal relationships. This includes
• Saying no! to extra tasks at work, clients who "need" you after hours, having a perfectly clean house, letting your relatives stay with you for two weeks...
• Saying yes! It's okay to go out and do things before all of your notes are finished, before your house is vacuumed or before you've purchased groceries for the week.
• Eating frozen foods. I am so. tired. of hearing about how I should eat for optimum health. Over the past year and a half and three different doctors I've been told about all of the things I should be watching out for (soy, dairy, grains, sugar, chemicals that I can't pronounce, preservatives) and all of the things I should be eating instead (turmuric, vitamins, probiotics, mushrooms, things that are dark in color) and at a certain point I decided that it was less stressful to have some pain rather than have to spend so much time obsessing over food. I now keep some Daiya frozen pizzas and some peanut butter and jelly on hand at all times for those days when I just need to not think.
• Therapy I can not stress this enough for my fellow social workers and therapists. We need it, too.
• Humor "Not a shred of evidence exists in favor of the idea that life is serious." No one knows who actually said that, but they were right. I try to laugh as much as possible, even about the tough stuff.
• Speaking Up I often come across the sentiment that the world (and this career field) has always been "like this" and there isn't much we can do to change it so we should just accept it. That feels disempowering to me, so I say something. I believe in change. When I can, I'm going to tell you what's not working and try for something different. 
• Standing Up for myself and for others. This is hard and often makes other people mad. But doing it is like giving myself a huge hug. 
• Moving More Slowly I'm trying to stop rushing. Even if I'm late. 

What do you think? I'd enjoy having more of a conversation about this!

Believe

How will I pass this test?

                Have faith, just believe.

Is this the right college for me?

                Just pray, and believe.

Why did my friend die?

                God has a plan, believe.

Why was he healed, but not her?

                God works in mysterious ways.

How can miracles be real?

                Because we believe they are.

Why does a loving God send people to hell?

                You must believe he has a reason.

Why do I still get panic attacks after all these years?

                Because you haven’t believed-

                                                                -hard enough.

Reoccurance

It fits like an aura, an opaque cloak;

A sudden arrival during daydreams

I try to figure out what broke.

I float in the shower, upstream

I open my eyes wider to search

Watch desperately for a meaning, a theme.

One day I’ll figure it out, with a lurch.

Worry Is The Coldest Season

When it snows, we catch snowflakes in our palms

And smile as they melt. We breathe in cold air,

We breathe out the power to destroy.

When we want to be creative we collect hundreds

Of snowflakes, briefly turn our warm breath away,

And let each distinct sliver of snow meld into one.

We breathe in excitement, we breathe out and let

The snowballs fly. We’re hit, we giggle, the game goes on.

When we’re bored with our cold, flat street, we move

To the mountains, ride with skis to the top, 

And let ourselves fly, momentarily breathless.

Once, you wouldn’t let go.  You crouched at the top

Frozen, because you took a breath in

And forgot to let another one out. What was different

About this snow? What did you think you could control?

When they told you everyone must let go and continue moving,

Did you think that didn’t apply to you? 



This started with: http://www.napowrimo.net/2014/04/day-twelve-2/

Appearances

I shuffle through the day white knuckled,

Bearing my arms crossed to hide my punch ready hands;

With every introduction I lose more feeling in my fingers.

I smile- a wide eyed, open mouthed friendly grin-

You’re glad to see me you’re glad I’m here you think I’m competent

I can’t breathe. I smile wider in an effort to find more oxygen.

I am wanted here, my reputation precedes me, I’ve got stairs to climb

When I wrench my arms open into a stiff hug they’re shaking.

Anxiety is not reserved for those situations which seem obviously dangerous.

Here, I risk five years of growth four years of education three references who believed in me

And those two supervisors who may have talked about me over dinner. So I hold

Myself close, watch like a hunter in a dark dense forest, keep my back against the wall,

Count the seconds until I get to sit in my own cubicle. Anxiety

Brings new meaning to the phrase “corporate jungle”, brings new handicaps to the conference room,

Gives me nightmares about becoming a client again, of being discussed in concerned tones

At a meeting I’m not allowed to attend.

It’s just Monday, full of yawns, slow traffic, evaporating memories of sleeping in on the weekend.

It’s Monday, I barely slept, I laid out my clothes for the week, I left the house too soon,

I impressed my boss by showing up early. He doesn’t know I’m following a script, acting the part

Of calm and capable; that I wish the weekend would stretch out and cover me until I find my place here,

That I can relate to the first client of the day, who tells us she quit because her job moved too fast.

CPR/First Aid

I realized what it is about emergencies

That produces such panic in me:

When I give you breaths, I become your lungs.

When I push your chest so hard your ribs break,

I become your heart beat.

When I stop your blood flow, I am

Keeping your very life inside of you.

No amount of training or exposure

Can prepare me for moments of such intimacy.

Socially Anxious Poetry

#22/30

I started by cowering in the back of the room

Mouth open in awe of the woman before me:

She spoke my mind without ever meeting me,

She spoke her experiences to life,

She spoke.

I started by crying in the back of the room:

I could have written that myself

But I didn’t.

I walk through every day afraid of

The next moment someone will speak to me.

Kind words or not, human interaction is terrifying.

Drugged up or not, I have no idea what to say

When you smile and greet me.

I may have strong opinions and the words to share them

I may be talented at all the things I try

But the only thing that matters in the moment is that

I can’t catch my breath.

Yet, here I am! Alone, onstage, barely breathing,

Because I found power in poetry and I propelled myself forward;

I found healing in yelling my thoughts before an engrossed

Audience; FINALLY someone is listening, finally, someone is

Hearing me and cheering me on, finally, I don’t need a surrogate,

Finally, I AM MY OWN VOICE.

I walk through each day with my eyes lowered

Afraid of the vulnerability of eye contact. I flinch when

Someone tries to hold my hand, I don’t know
How to deal with a compliment. But,

I have meaningful ideas and I have found the words to share them.

I stepped in front of a crowd without a bullet proof vest and I

Emerged with lungs of steel and a voice like a siren and I

Will continue to shout from the stage

For myself

And for the person cowering in the back of the room, waiting

For their chance to come to life.

Bomb

#14/30

Woke up this morning with

A bomb in my belly and my skin

Was a quivering wick. I almost

Wrote you all letters: exactly what

I’ve always wanted to say to you,

In succinct honesty.  It’s probably better that

I slept in instead; went for a jog;

Took some medicine, let the rabbit  

Bite me when I tried to pet her. It’s

Probably better, for once, that I stopped

Unlocking the cage around my voice and

Let the anger simmer down into something

My audience can swallow. Where would we be,

Then, if I had struck pen to paper? In pieces,

Spread over 3,000 miles, mouths agape.

To the Man Who Thinks It's Weird That I Still Feel Anxious Around Him:

I wish that I could accurately put into words what it feels like to be this anxious all the time; to be uncomfortable around everyone, even myself.

I struggle to make anxiety tangible because my mouth is dry, my fists are clenched too tightly to hold a pen and my jaw aches from grinding my teeth. I can't seem to open my mouth wide enough or maintain eye contact long enough to teach you about the crawling sensation under my skin or the fear of judgement lining my skull and holding my brain together.

I can, however, tell you what anxiety is not. It's not what you said it is; it's not weird. It's not weird that some of the chemicals in my head aren't balanced, it's not weird that I take pills to calm the jitters, it's not weird that I've felt this way for so long that it's become a comfortable habit. It's not weird that I am one of 40 million adults in America who have an anxiety disorder. Anxiety as a constant companion is far from weird.

What might actually be considered weird is the way I've handled anxiety; the way I get up and work in a job far outside of any comfort zone I've ever known or how I'v been able to open myself up on paper and to read aloud, even when I'm out of breath and my voice is shaking. What's weird is the amount of fight I still have left in me after almost two decades of valleys, false hopes, and days where it hurt to get out of bed. What's weird is that I'm still letting you in, intimately, when you don't understand.

I might not be able to make anxiety clear for you at least know this: I have anxiously, successfully made it this far and for that I am worthy of your respect.

Introvert

A rough draft/first writing, but I really wanted to share this. I'll share it again if/when I fix it up.

We found a pet rabbit in the backyard

A skinny, gray rabbit too scared to protest being handled

Too scared to eat, to move, to bite.

She was the timeless children’s classic, the discarded Velveteen,

Except she never found her way back home.

For weeks, she ran from touch. She lunged when I moved a hand toward her nose

She fought and kicked when I tried to pick her up, she grunted at the cat.

For weeks, she was all I could talk about. I shared her picture like a parent

With a new child. I giggled about her grunts, I rolled up my sleeves to

Show off her bites. I told my therapist about her

And she instantly became a metaphor. All her rabbit habits are mine as well:

The distrust, the fear of touch, the hiding and the digging.

I lay next to her cage for hours to gain her trust

The way the rabbit websites told me to

The way I wanted someone to lay next to me.

A co-worker once jokingly called me the rabbit whisperer

Like I have some secret way to communicate and teach a fragile prey animal

To trust, to be comfortable, to eat food from my hands.

But it’s not a secret at all: I and the rabbit have the same wide eyes,

The same speeding heartbeat, the same vigilant posture.

I only treated her the way I want to be treated. 

Imprint

Between a visit from Bryan Roessel, a date who likes poetry, open mic nights and a poet roommate I'm been inspired...almost pushed...to write more. Lately it seems that words and ideas form mostt often while I''m running. This one developed yesterday and I actually got the courage to share it with Rafael and get some feedback. Here's what I've got so far:

Imprint

There’s a wide spread belief that one will always be emotionally attached

To the first person they sleep with; that the hormones and the vulnerability

Will imprint on us like ducks on their ducklings and we will follow

Our first partner blindly, in line, never asking questions, never forgetting.

The same could be said for feelings. I shed the only three emotions I’d ever known:

Anxiety, sadness and anger. I was naked without them when you walked in.

You said I looked genuine and beautiful

And asked me to stay undressed.

It started on the Valentine’s Day when we ate the heart shaped pizza in my kitchen.

I laughed at your jokes but never  because I was nervous.

We went to a poetry reading and the poems were so beautiful that we cried.

I’d never cried over a poem before.

I fell in love with you, not because of the pizza or the poems or

Your brilliant blue eyes sharing tears like a cold shower in the desert.

I fell in love with you because you were with me the first time

I felt something other than numb. 

The Lack of Something

"Why do you stay in prison when the door is so wide open? Move outside the tangle of fear thinking." -Rumi

I spent decades of my life in prison and when the door was finally opened it took me years to walk out of my cell. (Today, I still sometimes gaze longingly outside from behind the bars on the window of my house, just to experience that reassuring feeling of confinement.)

Once I made it out of the prison I slowly expanded the spaces where I felt comfortable existing. From my bedroom to the kitchen to my car to the café where I sat for hours suspiciously eyeing strangers who didn't care to hurt me or even steal my food.

When I was locked down I grew to like being alone. the sounds of coughing and clanking and cursing assured me that someone was always nearby, and solitude was consistent and enforced; an opaque wall that kept me unnoticed and unscathed.  When I gained the choice to fraternize, loneliness crept in like a slow growing mold, filling my expanded space with stark, empty, uncomfortable silence.

This year, I tried to find one word to describe what I want to accomplish but there's no antonym for "loneliness." I've finally settled on the word "unlonely"because my desire is so intangible  it can only be expressed by the lack of something. Maybe I need to stop chasing it as if it were something I could tackle and lock up for safekeeping.

I think this is a good year to stop expanding. I think I will finally give up the handcuffs and even the prison bars in order to become the lack of all the things that have prevented me from letting people in.

Jesus said the truth will set you free, so I'm opening my prison door.

As many of you know, I have been dealing with some pretty severe anxiety problems for most of my life. Over the past three years I've come to recognize that a large majority of my anxiety comes from self hated and being afraid to be who I really am. I've been afraid to be honest about what I believe and what I want and who I want to be. I've been afraid of being wrong, of being judged, and of going to Hell. Because of that fear I conformed to a mold of what I thought I should be, even though that mold made me miserable.

This fear and self hatred reached a climax in October 2009 when I purposefully overdosed on anti-anxiety medication and ended up in the hospital for a week, in a place where I wasn't allowed to have shoelaces or pens or freedom.

The overdose was a true awakening. I am a good person, I realized, and there isn't a good reason for me to be hiding like this and pretending to be someone I'm not. Over the past three years I've chipped away at that stupid mold and allowed my body to stretch and reshape to its true form.

For the first time in my life, I know freedom.

Unfortunately, there is still an aspect of my life that is causing me to feel panic and fear. I have still been hiding from the people who have known me the longest: family, friends from college, people from church, Christians in general. For the sake of my mental health, it's time for me to be completely honest with everyone, not just the people who I know for sure will accept me. So, without further ado, these are some things that you should know about me:

• I don't want to get married and I don't want to have children. Ever.
• I believe it's okay to have sex before marriage and, in fact, I have done so myself.
• I believe it's okay to be gay.
• I don't want anything to do with church or religion. (This is something I haven't talked about a lot, but there are many, many aspects of Christianity that were harmful to me and I want to distance myself from them)
• And (here comes the hardest one to admit) I am queer. I am not a lesbian, but I am truly sexually and romantically attracted to women. I fought this truth back for years and it was torture. I'm done with it.

I'm nervous as I post this, but not anxious. I need to take care of myself and love myself and I can't do it with out being honest. I would rather deal with backlash from people who don't approve than stay in hiding. I am confident that I am a good, beautiful, and amazing person and I no longer need the approval of others to continue to believe that. 

Tipsy Self Love

Beautifully different. Think about what makes you different and what you do that lights people up. Reflect on all the things that make you different - you'll find they're what make you beautiful.

I am excited about this prompt! I love to talk about myself.

I also often think about how different I am from other people.

Because I am. I'm strange.

I don't often think about how being strange makes me beautiful. So here goes:

I love that I don't wear make-up and I'm still HOT! For most of my life I haven't had a problem getting dates. The natural me is beautiful. I don't have to cover up imperfections in order to step out in public.

Sometimes I wear strange outfits, too. I stand out at the office a lot because we have such a causal dress code and I like to dress up. I'm comfortable in skirts and bright colors. I'm beautiful because I stand out.

I'm not just about my looks. I've been known to not care much about the way I look. In fact, once I shaved my head just because it's damn hot here in the summer and I wanted to be comfortable. I was NOT any less beautiful. I think I might have actually been more beautiful due to how much more often I smiled.

These things seem so minor compared to what I feel like is a glaringly obvious difference between me and the rest of the world: I feel weak. For most of my life as I struggle with depression the struggle seems so public and obvious. I've always felt like I can't handle myself or my emotions or my problems as well as anyone else because I always seem to be publicly falling apart in one way or another: getting sad for no apparent reason, having panic attacks, talking too fast because I'm nervous, or calling in sick because I'm overwhelmed.

What I've realized over the years is that I'm not actually weaker than anyone else. Everyone is weak in one way or another. The beautiful difference between me and everyone else is that I show my weakness. Showing weakness takes bravery, and bravery is beautiful.

Hello there, neighbor.

Last week I discovered that one of my next door neighbors is my age. We both pulled into the parking lot at the same time, then got out of our cars and began to unlock our apartment doors in unison. I looked questioningly in her direction, wondering if I should say hello. At the same time, she looked questioningly at me, probably wondering whether she should say hello or get out her pepper spray. Our eyes met, but no sounds emerged from our mouths. We both stepped into our apartments at the same time.

That night I had a dream that, instead of scurrying nervously into my apartment after making eye contact, I introduced myself to my neighbor. We became good friends and even threw some parties together. I woke up determined that to officially meet my neighbor and to make a new friend.

This is actually a bigger task that you might think. I'm very shy and socially awkward. Not only does introducing myself to a stranger make me nervous, but I also can't figure out how to go about doing this. I've considered everything from just knocking on her door and saying hi to baking her brownies to hiding behind her car and jumping out and yelling "Surprise" the next time she walks by.

Finally, this morning, a legitimate, non-stalker opportunity arose. I was leaving my apartment as she was entering hers. I saw her walking toward her door as I turned to lock mine. At this point, I was both excited and terrified. "Here's my chance," I thought. And then, "Oh, crap. I actually have to SAY something!"

Fortunately, my desire to overcome my shyness beat out my desire to avoid being socially awkward and I managed to squeek out a small, "Hello" and a little eye contact. She said hello back, and rushed into her apartment.

I have spent much of the day pondering the look on her face at that moment. Was she angry? Annoyed? Or equally as terrfied? Is she opposed to being neighborly and friendly, or is she, too, terrified of social interactions?

I guess the only way to find out is to continue my attempts to be friendly. Now that I've said hello, what step should I take next? A note slipped under the door? A invitation to meet my rabbits?

Someone needs to explain to me how this whole "social interaction" thing actually works.