A friend joined me today for my thrice-weekly writing session at the coffeehouse. Well before I landed on the corn-dusted shores of Chambana, this friend answered pesky questions from me—where should I go for this? Where should I go for that?

We met one morning for coffee almost three years ago now, and as we loaded our kids in our tandem mini-vans, she turned to me.

“Next week you’ll come over,” she said. “There is a difference between getting together for coffee and going over to someone’s house.”

I put her off for weeks.

It wasn’t her. It was me. And it still is me. My friends here are warm and kind and generous. They reach out to me, they make me feel welcome in their already close-knit circles. And so often, I shut them out.

I don’t do it to be mean. I don’t do it because I don’t care for them, because that couldn’t be further from the truth. The fact of the matter is that it’s hard for me to trust people, no matter how open they are. It doesn’t help that I’m notoriously scatterbrained: emails go unanswered, RSVPs are late, thank-you cards get pushed aside for other tasks.

I wasn’t always this way. Or at least, before, my reserved nature was polite. I could be counted on to respond in socially graceful ways. Now? Not so much. The only way I can defend myself is to say that my own husband and kids suffer from my absent-mindedness, too.

Not much of a defense, that.

***

I wore a button-down navy blue shirt-dress with white polka dots. Just three days before, I went to the salon and bid my stylist cut off my waist-length college-girl hair, in favor of a soft, wavy bob that brushed the top of my shoulders.

I clutched my Steno pad in a sweaty palm, as my editor led me to a counter-top and a plastic chair. He waved me into the chair and pointed at the phone:

“That’s yours,” he said. “When someone else’s phone rings and they aren’t at their desk, pick it up and answer ‘newsroom’ and tell them your name.”

I looked at him, looked at the phone, and looked back at him.

A path littered with bad relationships and lost friends led to that battered, beige phone. I spent my senior year of college living alone in self-imposed exile after a terrible break-up and a series of friendships gone awry. I was at fault as much as those who hurt me, but it was hard for me to see my own foibles clearly.

After 12 months of speaking to almost no one but my family and the five children I babysat for, I was ill-prepared for the life of a local reporter. I had to find my own sources, drum up stories, walk the beat, as they say. I had to work the phones and glad-hand at Kiwanis meetings.

***

When I write for money, I still do a lot of reporting. The Internet makes life so much easier: interviews by email, searching for sources through webforms, and sites designed specifically to pimp content experts.

I wrote a series of stories once about a controversial zoning law in the town I covered. Citzens were pitted against one another, and the dividing lines were geographical. I had to get comments from both sides, using what we called the criss-cross.

These big, bound books were filled with addresses, and the corresponding phone numbers. I looked up the address, dialed the number, and asked to speak to whomever would talk.

It was excrutiating. Worse than the fireman’s banquet, where ruddy-cheeked men old enough to be my father patted me, tipsily, on the knee. Worse than the town board’s Christmas party, where I mingled with local officials in my red dress.

After awhile, I learned to shed myself and don another persona altogether—one that was confident, assertive, competent. Even friendly and social.

Soon enough, this persona became part of me, and I can still slide in and out of her when I need to. Faculty parties, dinners where I am the only spouse, chats with preschool moms I don’t know very well. I can make charming small talk with almost anyone.

But still, inside, is that sweaty-palmed girl who purposefully excluded herself from almost any social situation that might put her sensitive, bruised and fearful heart at risk.

***

I don’t call my friends on the phone. I email them, knowing full well that some of them won’t check their email for days. I don’t invite people to my home a lot. I’d rather meet on neutral ground. I don’t like to stay long, or extend myself too intimately.

That shows here, too, when I don’t email you back when you comment, or when I just click “share” in my Google Reader instead of leaving you a note. It’s easier for me. It relieves me of the burden of seeming like the cool customer some of you seem to think I am.

Because I’m not. I’m still a 15-year-old girl who was always left out, chosen last in gym, runner up in the class elections. I’m scared of you, and of the intimacy that a relationship with you might bring.

I hold out my hands to push you away, because if I don’t care about you, you can’t hurt me. I can’t get jealous when you have dinner with each other or spend the weekends together.

But I eavesdrop on your Twitter conversations or read the comments you leave for each other or listen to your conversations about impromptu play dates I wasn’t invited to, and feel left out—when in reality, I am segregating myself.

Because if I don’t pick up that phone, you can’t hang up on me.