Anthropophobia

I was scared of making friends.

A short story written by Ayomikun Amuni

– [ ] A SHORT STORY 
I vividly remember when I was little and how ‘not-social’ I was. It wasn’t like I didn’t want to play with other children but it was this fear I had in me. I was always scared of mixing with other children, what would they think of me? How sure was I that they’d accept me for who I was? What if I walk up to them to play and they snub me? What if all of a sudden they stop talking to me? I couldn’t stop thinking of all these whenever I saw them playing together in the compound. I would always sit on my own comfortably in my own space, play on my own with help of nobody or just sit doing nothing. Most times the neighbors thought there was something wrong with me and some of them told their children not to play with me instead . The concerned ones were quick to report me to my mum that she should check on me and how not so comfortable I looked.
Unknowingly for me, my mum started keeping an eye on me.
I had few classmates so that even made it worse that I had no best friend among them . After school I’d just run to my siblings class and wait for them then head for home straight. To me it was that easy!

Don’t get me wrong, my eldest sister was scared of what was happening to me mentally that she would always call the kids in the compound and the neighborhood kids at times to play with me but I’d rather go away and not play whenever they did in groups
– [ ] IT WAS JUST ME DOING MY THING WITH FEAR IN ME.

Until it was my birthday and my mum decided to celebrate it for me. I knew there wasn’t much money on her but she still tried everything she could to gather children and share a lot of goodies. The next year she celebrated it again. This time she called her friends to bring their children, gathered the neighborhood kids and the kids in our compound to celebrate with me. I felt so weird about it. The only things I did on my birthdays was cut my cake and sit on my own until everything was over.

– [ ] This time it was DIFFERENT!

My mum made me a very big cake and after cutting it on my birthday, she sliced the cake into small shapes and put them in a tray, gave it to me to distribute to my friends. I told her I couldn’t and I didn’t have friends. She told me all those little children came all the way to my place to celebrate with me and I shouldn’t let them down.
I dropped the tray and asked her to follow me to distribute the cake because I couldn’t do it on my own. She complied. Gathering courage, I took the tray and started from the front to the back of where the kids were. They kept telling me thank you until it was finished. The appreciation got to me 梁.

– [ ] So it happened, this girl walked up to me and said something that made me feel better. She was of my age and a bit taller than me .
– [ ] On my next birthday, mum celebrated it again and kept celebrating it every year until I started to talk to everyone in the compound, made friends with her friend’s children, made friends in school too!
I wasn’t aware of what my mum was up to those days, I can see it has a great impact on me and I’m grateful 李.