New at parties all over again

Empty hands feel enormous at a party. The gaps between conversations run four times too long. You join a circle late and leave it early. Then later, alone, a thought climbs in, sounding very sure. 'Maybe I needed it. Maybe that was the part that worked.' That thought is reading the wrong evidence.

You've been doing rooms one way. A built in reason to arrive, to step out, to come back. The cigarette was your exit pass, and it passed itself off as your charm. Take the support off any skill and it wobbles, because you're finally seeing it on its own. You're not socially broken. You're new at doing this by hand.

Awkward is what learning feels like from the inside. Most of that room learned this at fifteen, and badly. God has started plenty of people from exactly here, and He's patient with the pace. A beginner and a fraud feel identical from behind your own eyes. Tell them apart by direction. A fraud stays put. A beginner improves.

Walk into the next one with two things of your own. Something to hold and one question you'd ask anybody. A glass of anything counts. 'What are you working on lately?' carries ten minutes by itself. At the door, pray the short version. Come in with me. And when that old thought climbs in afterward, answer it. That was me in there. All of it.