Most people who know me today, who haven’t known me my entire life, would never believe how shy I actually am.  I have spent my entire life pushing that shyness into a box deep inside me.  But I still am really really shy.

I was the hiding behind mom’s skirts kind of shy for a very very long time.  So shy that even family gatherings made me feel a little sick, especially if they were full of all sides of my family, such as my uncle’s families and the like.  I knew who they all were, more or less, but I could never remember all their names, or what I was suppose to call them, i.e. should I call Cousin X’s Aunt, aunt? Or is she not my aunt, so I should just call her Y? And I was always too shy to ask anyone, even my mother, the names of people I was suppose to know already and couldn’t remember.  So I would hide.  Behind my mother.  With the cousins I did know.

I think being shy is what leads, in some part, for me at least, to being Borderline Agoraphobic.  Its that same sort of sick feeling inside, slightly embarrassed, nervous, unsure.  What if I make a fool of myself?  What if I do know that one person and I don’t remember that I know them?  That has actually happened to me at work.  People have come to the office and have been all ‘Hi Robyn, How are you?’ and I fake my way through knowing who they are until I figure it out.  And strangly, its people that are coming to see me that I do this with the most.  I can almost always identify for my boss who someone is (he’s brain is worse than mine!) or if the CEO shouts out “Whose that guy we know at XXX?” I can tell him.  But if I run into some vendor of mine in the lobby of our main building?  I usually can’t remember who they are, unless I’ve met them at least 2 or 3 times.

In some weird way this is wrapping itself up in the way I feel about my cousin being here for a week.  For 99.999999% of it, I am so excited to see her I could die.  We haven’t seen each other in about 10 years, we’ve always gotten along great (including a truly memorable trip to London with her and our grandmother OMG 23 years ago) and I can’t wait to hear straight from the horses mouth what it is like to live in a country like East Timor, where she’s been for donkey’s years.  But that .0000001% of me is that little girl who wants to go hide behind her mother’s skirts.

That same part of me is floating around right now because I’ve just been assigned to represent NISP at both Science and Innovation Week organisational meetings, and for Darwin200 organisational meetings.  I know my role, event space offering, I know what I can tell them in terms of discounts vs donated space.  But my heart is in my throat at the idea that the Tuesday after I get back from holiday I have to walk into the meeting room they’ve booked at a City Centre Hotel and say “Hi, Robyn Fraser, from NISP.”

I know I can do it.  But I’m already terrfied.

I imagine I’ll be a wreck on the day.

And, darn it, due to huge economy drive at work?  They won’t let me get my own business cards.  Which would surely help!!!