My anxiety about making and answering phone calls is at an all time high, but I've always hated talking on the phone. When I was younger I used to sit by our landline phone trying to control my breathing before dialing my best friend's phone number, because I was terrified of missing that critical beat between the person on the other end answering "hello?" and my response of "hi, is Dana there?" I worried that there might be too long of a pause or that they would hear me taking a deep breath before responding like I was wasn't ready for conversation when I called them. My breathing ritual bordered on OCD behavior. I was strange, but I didn't want anyone to think it just because I hadn't breathed correctly before dialing. As I got older I still worried about how I sounded to the other person, carefully reciting my lines in my head and trying to anticipate how the conversation would go, so that I was prepared and could sound casual even though my heart was beating out of my chest.
I rejoiced when I finally got a cellphone to text with my junior year of high school. I could talk to people without having to TALK to them and it was glorious. Long pauses in conversation were no longer awkward, I had time to carefully craft my response before hitting SEND, and no one could hear the uncertainty that I was often feeling. Through the years I've encountered people who would complain that texting was too impersonal, or that they didn't like that the person on the other end could ignore them until they were ready to respond, and that phone calls were so just much "easier". To those people I say, "Well, you don't have to talk to me then" simple!
The only people in this world who I feel comfortable talking to on the phone are my parents and my husband. That's it and that's all. I had been making an effort to try to answer my sister-in-law's frequent phone calls because I try to be polite, but that was before pregnancy hormones were in play making everything that much more difficult for me to navigate. Lately I've been ignoring everyone's phone calls just to text them later asking "what's up?" Maybe that's rude, but it's the best I can do right now. If I could make it so that phone was unable to receive calls I would.
I am desperately missing wine and my anti-anxiety medication.
