Frustration

It's been one of those exceedingly frustrating weeks where I've spent way too much time alone in my head jumping to lots of ridiculous conclusions.  You know, the ones where I assume everyone hates me and that I'm leaving mostly the wrong impressions everywhere.  The ones where I assume no one wants to read all the contents of my head so I just don't bother to write them anywhere.  The ones where I second guess everything...which leads to randomly deleting things that probably shouldn't be deleted.  

My days have been filled with mostly tidying and shopping and kids' needs and mundane, but fun, summer activities.  Lots of stuff, but no substance.  And that's never a good thing.  

Savannah asked me in her email on Monday how things were going in the new house, ward, etc, and I told her, "Honestly, I feel like I'm doing this life wrong.  I can't remember how to connect with people or how to be interesting.  I feel like I'm either trying too hard or not trying hard enough.  All the people who talked to me on the first Sunday have moved back to their normal lives.  Either they haven't discovered me yet, or they didn't love what they found."

My VT who lives just down the street from us has some aversion either to me or to leaving her house, I'm not sure which.   She texted me last week and said, "Are you home?  I just realized it's the last day of the month and I haven't even visited you so I made some cookies."  I was so excited that she was coming by.  Even a couple of minutes with someone standing on my doorstep would have been awesome.  But when the doorbell rang a few minutes later, it was her son with a lovely container of warm chocolate chip cookies and a pretty printed message attached to the top.  I can't even tell you how disappointing that was.  I would have gladly traded in the cookies and the pretty packaging  for a five minute conversation.  

There are a handful of  people from the ward who have found me on FB, and yesterday I thought I recognized a few of them while we were dropping kids off for Youth Conference, but their faces are still a little bit unfamiliar, so I hoped they would say something first.  They didn't.   And in that ocean of people in the Stake Center parking lot, I barely recognized anyone, so I wasn't even sure which ones were from my ward, and none of them talked to me, so I didn't dare talk to anyone either.  What an odd feeling to be standing in the middle of an entire stake parking lot full of members of the church and not recognize a single face.  Then on the drive home, I thought again, "I think I'm doing this wrong.  Maybe I should have tried talking to some of those people in the parking lot."  But which ones would I have picked?  And who even were the youth and who were the parents?  Who even is in my ward and who isn't?  ugh...you'd think I would be better at this after SO many moves.  OR...! Maybe I shouldn't need to talk to people so much.  Maybe I'm too worried about trying to make friends and connect with people anyway.  Maybe I should stop worrying about the whole world and just...what??  I have no idea what should even go in that space...because if you don't connect with other people on the planet, then what is this life even for?!?!

This Sunday, there's a missionary fireside on service and the sister missionaries called last week to ask me to give a ten minute talk on KINDNESS.  I've read two conference talks and seven million scriptures and I still have no idea what I'm supposed to say.  Because at this very moment, I'm not feeling super kind.  I'm mostly feeling forgotten and alone in this new Alabama wilderness.  And I'm wondering what in the heck I'm supposed to do here.  And how kindness is even supposed to begin with me if no one wants to have a conversation with me?