Baby Steps

_{Photo by Danny Howe}

They say in every family, there's always a black sheep. That one person who goes left when the mother or father ask them to go right. He or she is always doing things that the others don't do. Well I wasn't the black sheep of the family, my elder brother was. I was that kid who would do everything to make sure I stayed out of trouble just to avoid getting punished. So there was nothing like late night parties and this wasn't because my dad always stopped us from going, because even if he had asked us to go, I still wouldn't.

Let's just say I was that kid who always shied away from things I normally wouldn't do, like parties. And living a life like that, it became part of me. So when I went to school, I still didn't party or do any of those stuff I don't do at home. Like I said, we weren't really banned from attending parties because there's nothing wrong with attending parties, when something starts to go wrong is when you start doing some stupid things at those parties, things like drugs.

Well for my first two years in school, I only left my home only when I had to. It was mostly from home to school and from school back to the house. I was staying alone and yet, that way of life I used to live at home never left.

Then some few months back, a friend had invited me to her friend's birthday party at this bar. It was going to be a night party and I had first declined to attend but after I gave it a little thought, I changed my mind. I had nothing to do at home so why not just attend. Besides, the person inviting me was a good friend of mine and this was the first time she was asking me to accompany her to such an occasion. And I could always come back early if it turned out to not be my thing. I said all of this to myself before leaving the house.

Three house later I got back home. It was some time close to midnight and it turned out it wasn't as bad as I thought. My first night party turned out to be a birthday of a military man. The friend who invited me had left that part out because she knew how I always avoided anything that has to do with the police or the military. Turned out this guys can be really cool when they want to, they just choose to be brutal almost all the time. Maybe it's because of the nature of their job or they just enjoy being that way.

Anyways, I'm happy my first night outing didn't suck because that would have ruined other outings for me in the future if it had been terrible. Now I guess I can always attend outings like this every now and then when I do get invited. This I believe is one of my many baby steps in trying to be less of an introvert and probably an ambivert.