Sunday, June 24, 2012

The journey to belonging

Last night, I went to Home Bar to enjoy a bit of the show upstairs, talk with Management, and go for a walk.  (I love walking through the part of town that Home Bar is situated in.)  After exchanging pleasantries with Management -- who was outside selling hotdogs, hamburgers, and other grilled food items -- I wandered over to the entrance and walked through the first floor to make my way upstairs for the show.

I might become a social butterfly yet!
As I meandered through the karaoke crowd toward the stairs, I found myself nodding to or even stopping briefly to say hello to a number of people:  Fellow Geek, Sassy Waiter, one of Sweet Cynic's former love/sex (it's never clear which he's actually looking for, and I doubt even he knows) interests, and even Rumor Queen.  By the time, the realization hit me:  I can't make my way through this place anymore without running into someone I know.

I'm not really sure when that happened.  I can still vaguely remember the old days -- back before I met Rumor Queen and even while he and I were dating -- when I hardly knew anyone.  Going to Home Bar was an uncomfortable experience for me, because I felt like a lone traveler surrounded by strangers, with no sense of how to say hello or establish friendships with any of the people around me, people who all seemed far more connected.  People who seemed to all know each other and didn't really need some stranger trying to force his way into their social circles.

It made the thought of going out to such a place seem terrifyingly daunting.  It's one of the reasons I was thankful when Rumor Queen and I started dating.  He seemed to be part of that world, and I hoped that sticking with him would provide me with a ticket to becoming part of the crowd, someone truly integrated and welcome rather than a stranger wandering through while remaining an outsider.

Rumor Queen never did provide me a pathway to change that, at least not the way I expected him to.  To be honest, he was the kind to run off and chat with all his friends he already had established history with me and then come back to me when he was tired.  The only way in which he socially helped me -- and I am thankful to him for that, though he may have come to regret it -- is that he provided me with my first introduction to Management and Sweet Waiter.  Through them, I met Sassy Waiter and the rest of the Home Bar staff.  That encouraged me to keep coming back, which allowed me to reconnect with Fellow Geek, who I already knew from other venues.  From there, I just started to meet people.  People even started saying hello to me.

I don't really have a "crowd" or group of friends I hang with when I go to Home Bar.  I'm still very much a lone traveler a lot of the time I'm there.  And yet, I'm a lone traveler who knows people, who is known and recognized by those others, and feels like I'm part of the greater whole.  And it's built a great sense of confidence for me.

As I walked up the stairs to wait for the first show of the night to smile, I smiled at how Home Bar has earned its name in my heart and how that journey has changed me for the better.

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