I don't know how to have a conversation.

I really don't care any more.

This is me.

I can't have a conversation.

I just don't know what to say. What's appropriate to say in any given situation.

This shyness is really debilitating.

Whether it's from my complete lack of social experience, something wrong in my brain, or some negative programming as I grew up - I don't know.

But what IS evident is that I am extremely, painfully shy, to the extent that I can NEVER think of what to say to other people, and I act clearly shy in front of them.

What I really wish is to have someone beside me 24/7, and guide me through social situations. For example, they can TELL me what to say in certain situations, how to respond in certain situations, how to act in certain situations - EXPLICITLY, not something vague like "oh just be friendly and talkative"

They say we learn through exposure? So far it's not working. After all, I've had 19 years of "exposure" in my life, where I was that shy guy. Yeah, I've 'experienced' a lot of social gatherings. I've 'observed' a lot of social situations. Yeah, I have a lot of 'experience' in how to be the shy guy. Yeah, it's helped a lot - hah!

To me doing that is like asking a 5-year old to observe an accomplished mathematician and then telling him to 'copy' what he does. SUUUUUURE. He'll need to go to school and learn 1+1 first. And then years of training.

I feel I'm just like that. People are telling me to do complex mathematics when I don't know how to handle 1+1. They go "just do it". I'm like - "errr... ok..." They say I need confidence. Oh sure, I'll have confidence. Yup. I'll be all ready and set to handle the complex mathematics. Yup. I am confident in myself!!! woo!!! Ok.... so how do I actually do all this stuff...???

Confidence is nothing when you don't have the skills / thinking mechanism to do it in the first place.

I really, really, seriously hate it how schools never systematically teach you social skills. Why can't kindergartens / primary schools JUST DO IT. They teach a lot of other 'useless' stuff - how about they just go out there and teach children THE most valuable skill in life??? Sure, many people "naturally" know it "instinctively" or via "upbringing"... but please, think of people like me!!!

I feel there really is very little support for people like me. Society just doesn't care. They label us as the shy, nerdy, lonely losers and move on with their lives. Ok to be more precise - they do kind of care, in the sense that they show sympathy / pity - but they aren't doing much about it.

Anyway... back on topic -

I am a man of very, very few words - not by "choice", but because I have no choice.
That's all I know. That's all I can be. I don't know what to say. What's appropriate to say.
I don't know what to do in social situations. I just don't know. And nothing's out there to teach me what to do. How to do it. Sigh. I give up. I just don't know how to move forward from here. I feel trapped at a dead end.

I reminisce -
even as a child,
I was that lone boy stuck in a library.
When we visited other people, I read books, and didn't talk.
When I travelled with my parents - I was very, very quiet, to the extent that they'd "forget I was even there"
I've always been the quiet one.
I sat alone a lot.
I walked alone a lot.
As a child it was all ok. I call it children's bliss. At that age society doesn't impose 'normality' upon them, as an imperative.
Quietness has been a part of myself for so long.

I just don't know how to let it go. I don't know how I'll live without it. I don't know how to function without it. I don't know how to go about life without it.

I don't know how to "change" without "acting". Yes, acting implies that I haven't changed really - that in the core, I am still that quiet, shy, self, but I try to "act" that I'm not. To be frank, I don't think this will ever work. Because you are fooling yourself. You're pretending. And I don't want to be that way - I want to live my life, not "act" it!

If I am my shy self - so be it. That's me.

Society! Can you hear me? THIS IS WHO I AM. Accept me or reject me, I don't care. Just don't force me against my will.