No Sharks in the Deep End

I take an extraordinarily long time to wade myself into a pool, a friendship, a new environment. I need to know everything I can about a subject before I jump in. So with a stack of maps, menus for highly rated vegan friendly restaurants, and a variety of activities including cheap/free days and coupons, we were on our way. I drove for about an hour approaching LA and managed to yield onto 3 incorrect freeways, map in hand and GPS yelling "Rerouting!" at me. From now on Mike drives unless I am familiar with the road and driving mentality. We also found ourselves walking up hills in the dark looking for a nearby restaurant that would allow a teenager entrance on St Patricks Day. And my teenager gave me the best advice: "When you are walking up a hill toward darkness and on the verge of tears, turn around and walk back towards the bright flashing lights and the sound of people." But this is a foreign concept to me, the girl who hid behind my mom's prairie skirt, my friendly and beautiful sister, my excitable and engaging husband. Too often people go to hug me and say "Oh, sorry, you don't like hugs!" and step back. I don't know where that comes from. I don't initiate hugs and I don't feel any lack of friendship without one, but I don't dislike them. My dad always told me that to have friends I have to be friendly. And apparently being friendly is more than simply smiling instead of sitting in the dark with my arms folded. So I decided that instead of using our vacation to run and hide, kidnap the social people in my family and get them all to myself for an entire week. I did get time with them, but we got to visit a few friends along the way. And those visits were the highlight of our trip. I feel like I'm waist deep in water now, at the point where maybe I won't think so much about things and can just jump in and enjoy life and relationships around me. Or maybe I'm still sitting on the first step waiting for Mike and Autumn to realize its been a half an hour and I'm still not in the pool and pull me in.