Sometimes I worry about what others think

I speak in public and my face turns pink

I make a mistake

and my hands begin to quake

I sit down alone

and now I’m in the loser zone

and my head fills up with doubts

and I look around but there’s no way out

so I just sit here all quiet instead

feeling all misread

like a book that’s tossed aside

because it didn’t follow the rules supplied

but was sad when they wanted happy

and funny when they wanted sappy

and so

book, you lay forgotten

just lying there all rotten

feeling all out of sync with society

because no one seemed to like your variety

and now you have social anxiety

and you’re probably gaining notoriety

and what happened to your old sobriety?

but then

a gentle hand reaches in

and takes you from the bin

she reads you as you are

and now she’s gotten pretty far

and she’s still laughing at all the right parts

and wiping her eyes when you tug at hearts

she’s lost in your tale

and now she exhales

and takes you over to a friend

and now he’s laughing in the middle and crying at the end

and now he’s giving you to someone else on lend

who laughs in the middle and cries at the end

and types you up and hits send

and now you’ve gone viral-

just the beginning of an upward spiral

and now your pages are scanned by eager eyes

who read you and print you as a prize

so now

maybe you weren’t so out of sync

perhaps you need to sit and rethink

yes, perhaps you listened to that one insult

and assumed a unanimous result

your mind was skewed

and you thought you were being booed

but really that one person was just being crude

so give others a chance

to explore you beyond a first glance

because there is a trove of treasures within

just waiting and waiting and lying therein.

“If we repeatedly are put in situations where we are made to feel different, to fear the judgment of other people, or are somehow singled out in a negative way, we can understandably develop beliefs about ourselves and the world that are more consistent with social anxiety. As these experiences continue, we may also begin to selectively pay attention only to those parts of our environment that reinforce our negative beliefs – for example, a public speaker may focus on the two people in her audience who appear bored, while she may hardly notice the 38 others who are watching and nodding with great interest” (socialanxietysupport.com).