No I avoid actually talking to people because I have a tendency to mess up my speaking. Like I know what I wanna say, sorta, but then I start slurring or I get stuck on a word, or I just keep mispronouncing the same word 10 times in a row before I finally say it right - and by that point I've just made myself look like an idiot who can't speak because she's "slow".
In general though, I just don't speak very well. Even when i know what I wanna say, my thoughts are always bouncing all over the place and I have a bad habit of getting lost in those thoughts while the other person is talking. And generally I go one way or the other with this sort of thing, I either blurt out what I'm thinking before I actually stop to think about what it is I'm saying or I spend too long thinking about something - to make sure I got it right - before I say it and by the time I'm ready to say it, the conversation has totally changed and now I have to start all over again.
See this is why I do not do verbal debates, because no matter how right I am it's just a matter of who can make their point the quickest which in turn makes the other person look slow mentally. I mean seriously. The loudest and the quickest always wins verbal debates/arguments. Seeing as how I'm fairly soft-spoken, yeah I tend not to win too many verbal arguments even if I am totally correct the vast majority of the time.
But I like to consider what it is I'm about to say, regardless of what it is, before I say it. So this gives people the impression I'm "slow" even if I'm not and they'd find that out if they waited just a half a second longer!
Point is, I avoid talking to people because they either shrug me off or treat me like I'm stupid. Sometimes I choose to be a **** about it if they do this though. What I do depends on how much of a **** they were also. More often than not though, I get shrugged off mostly because of the soft-spoken thing and more aggressive/assertive people muscle their way into the situation. Or I just flat-out do not get noticed, like I'm not even there.
To be honest, I only ever really get noticed if I have cleavage showing. And not just random notice either, I mean like if I'm trying to get someones attention for some reason then I'm not invincible when boobs.
Honestly, I'm not sure which is worse.
There are exceptions, don't get me wrong, amazingly enough some guy who worked at a bookstore complemented me on my hat and the buttons on it. And one time, with a guy who worked at a different bookstore (I'm beginning to detect a pattern here), we actually had a conversation because he had bought the same book I was buying at that time. He was also the guy at the check-out line, but regardless I don't usually talk to those people very much so it was unusual.
I mean, strangely neither event was unpleasant, and in the first situation I was nervous because I was getting an application but other than that I spoke fine. And the other time I spoke fine. I mean I talk to people fine when it's over something I give a flying **** about... like my hat or books. It doesn't require a **** ton of thought to discuss those things so I'm more relaxed with it. Now oddly enough, small talk requires too much thought on my part overall because I'm so fixated on how boring it is and I start getting lost in thought about how boring it is and then start thinking of more entertaining stuff and then i realize I'm ignoring the other person and when i finally come back to reality I have no idea what the Hell they're talking about... but it's usually still just as boring.
Then it takes too much will power to pay attention, and it's just not worth it really. So I mean that's how it is, if it interests me, I'm good usually. If it's small talk then... well, if I start looking like I'm stoned then it's a good indication I'm not listening to anything you're saying.
Although I still have speaking problems in either case, but usually the people talking to me about something interesting are awkward themselves to some degree or they like the conversation enough not to care. And so that's good... I think?
...it's complicated though. I just get so bored with most people I can't focus, but if they say something interesting then I'm good. But I'm too polite to just walk away. I mean I've had 3+ hour long conversations with my dad and tuned out the bulk of it before, so I'm fairly patient. But somehow it's harder to stay awake when there's not someone constantly screaming. Meh. *shrugs*
