potluck practitioner cultivation.

"Know thy shit", as one of my professors told me a couple quarters ago. "Know thy shit, or it will come up with a patient."

Well, here's some of my shit. It came up last night, and I figured rather than ignoring things and just watching a lot of bad television, as I am so prone to do, maybe I should write it down. Look at it under the scrutiny of whoever you 30 people are that check on my every blog update. Hope for some accountability so that I can't ignore the shit and watch a lot of bad television in the future.

See, last night I had a potluck. I spent all day shining the house up, got out all of my great grandma's fancy (and not terribly easy to break) party trays with matching cups and my tiered food display trays. I baked and shaped and layered, and then got all the dishes done so that the kitchen still looked spotless. I swept and I mopped and vacuumed and did a billion loads of laundry.
15 minutes before people were slated to arrive, I did my hair and makeup.
And then I waited.
and waited.
waited.

Finally, when everyone was forty minutes late (including my husband, who slept through the potluck) I had a plate of food and a couple cups of sweet tea and flicked on some netflix.
Nobody came, not late, not at all. Many didn't even bother letting me know why not.
So I put all the glassware in the cupboard and put all of the extra food in the fridge, and went to bed, feeling totally rejected.
And that's my shit. I automatically assume that I'm the second choice for everyone I come in contact with.  That people only really spend time with me because their number one choice of activity fell through. And every time someone only talks to me when they need their cats fed, or only says hello when I say hello first, or only looks my way when their "better" friends aren't available, that's what I tell myself. Rejected again. Second best.

I'm sure this has something to do with my homeschooled social skills- as a kid, the neighbor kids  only hung out with me when there was no one else to hang out with- when their school friends were busy. My best homeschooled friend had her real best friend who lived half a mile away, and I wasn't invited to any of their parties. The guys I seriously dated all left me for "better" options, whether that was friends or in one case, a skinnier and four years younger girl. In college, I was always on the outside of something, looking in.

And that's kind of how it always is.
And I forget that most people feel like outsiders and second best most of the time. Most people don't have best friends, where the best friendship is returned.  Most people are thoughtless, and just looking out for what's best for them in the moment.
Patients will be the same way. I can't have a rejection-fest every time someone blows off an appointment. I can't have a pity party if someone changes providers.

That said, I think I'm going to lay off making the first move for a few weeks. I clearly need to get more comfortable being by myself. I need to let go of this weird attachment I have to everyone, and give myself some time to get over myself and all these declined invitations. I need to stop wanting so desperately to be option number 1. That's not where real life happens.
I'm not the first person on the list, and that should be okay. 
I need to learn to be okay with the way that life flows.

Everything happens for a reason, even no-show potlucks and seeing the pictures from parties I wasn't invited to.