Do you ever just learn something really monumental about yourself almost by accident?

Recently I went to a large social gathering of people at a sex club. The event itself was ‘vanilla’ in that everyone was normally clothed, there were ‘normal’ activities as ice breakers and the expectation was that there’d be no sexual activity during this thing. It was just happening in a sex club.

And I decided to go to it. I hadn’t really interrogated my own reason for wanting to go other than I don’t want to be put off going to these things because of my own fears and anxieties. I don’t love the idea of driving there, I don’t love the idea of parking there, I don’t love the idea of walking into the place on my own, I don’t love the idea of socialising with large groups of people.

And that last one was the one that I thought I was going to this event in order to ‘get better’ at. I don’t want to be intimidated by large groups of people, I don’t want to avoid them. I want to be better at socialising and meeting new people etc. Or at least that’s what I thought.

So I get to this place. I drive there just fine and as I’m driving there I think … I’m not in the least bit panicked about driving to this place. Huh. That’s interesting.

So I get there and there’s one spot left in the car park. So I reverse park into it and … I’m not in the least bit panicked about parking in this car park space. Huh. That’s interesting.

It’s like these things that I’m holding onto myself (that I have anxiety about driving new places and that I have anxiety about parking hold me back from doing things and going places) and they’re possibly not true.

So I get out of my car and I join the queue to get into this place. I meet a friend in the queue and we end up chatting to the people ahead of us in the queue and to the people behind us. I don’t have any problem engaging in conversation with either my friend or the 5-6 new people I’ve only just met.

I get into the club, I meet other people. I go up to a group of strangers (there were 5 of them?) and say to them without prompting ‘Hi, this is my first time at a social like this, can I join you?’ and it wasn’t scary. Almost like I don’t have a problem at all socialising with strangers. Or groups of people.

At some points during the evening the people that I do know or have met leave me to go to the bar or to speak to other people and I feel content to lean against the wall at the edge of the bar area. There are lots of people around me that I could have spoken to … and what I realised during the night is that I didn’t have any issues or concerns about approaching any of them. I just didn’t want to. I didn’t feel compelled to.

And it actually felt like a life-changing realisation. I was shedding so many outdated beliefs about myself that night. But the one about socialising? It felt big.

What I realised that night is that I’m not shy. I’m not reserved. I don’t have social anxiety. I can talk easily to people. I know that most people like me when they meet me. I don’t worry what other people think of me. I’m not overthinking things when I’m meeting new people.

The reason I don’t do well in large groups of people is that quite often I don’t have a big enough ‘why’ to approach other people and start conversation. There isn’t that ‘why’ that motivates me to change things enough. What I realised in the middle of this sex club is that I was quite happy to talk to the couple of people that I knew beforehand. I was happy to make the effort in socialising with others … but only when it suited me. Only when the ‘why’ to do so was greater than staying on my own.

And I fucking love my own company.