I'm creepy, and a stalker

Okay, you know that song Creep by Radiohead? Good. Don't listen to it. If you do know it then, it just ran through my head. Part of the lyrics that go like this "I'm a creep, and a weirdo." I sang that at a friend's house. No wait. She did. That was a fun time. That bunch is great.

Okay, got that all out.

I think that a lot of introverts are alike in one way:  we watch people. I do it without trying. I always have. I only recently have recognized that that is what I do. I think part of it comes from not actually talking to people and therefore needing something else on which to focus my brain. But in the process of doing this they often notice me staring at them. And I'm afraid that they will think I'm staring at them talking to each other because I want to join the conversation (which I do, but not that much, it's less difficult to just keep watching anyway). So I have to actually be aware of myself >.> Which is really hard, when you get absorbed in what people are saying.

But really, when you think about it, isn't people-watching even a little bit creepy? Because they really don't know anything about you, and I mean... seriously... you'd be surprised the number of things I know about people just from observing and listening.

School last year especially. There is one girl in particular who I know for a fact I have said a total of two words to in my life: "Not really." (she was asking if the girl I was sitting next to and I were 'definitely besties'. just because we wouldn't stop laughing hysterically) Yet I know how this girl views God. She uses cuss words (and 'Christian cuss words') and feels kind of bad about it, but she also doesn't really care, and then she kind of feels bad about not caring.

Which is probably something most of her friends don't know. Scary how much you can find out about people just from what they say to others.

I think sometimes people don't understand how interested someone else can actually be in finding out about them just for the sole purpose of finding out. But people really are fascinating. They are. As I recently discussed in conversations with two different friends, people are amazing and everyone is hurting, you just don't know until you can get them to crack their shell. Cracking the shell is the hard part. I don't know if I'll ever be good at that.

I'll make another example, this time that of a retreat I had several weeks ago with the school I attend as of a month and a half ago. As would go along both being at a new school and being me, I obviously didn't know very many people. There were (are) a few who I really clicked with, and I'm really really grateful for that, especially in contrast to the previous school. Those few are all I really want or need. But this is irrelevant. Anyway, we split into huddles. Our huddle named itself Wolf Pack 11, and was all totally epic and had t-shirts with wolves on them. So when we met as a huddle we were supposed to talk about what the chapel speaker said. Only one time we ended up talking about issues that we have in life. Well. I use the term 'we' loosely.

Very loosely.

Because the whole time everyone else was talking about their life problems guess what I said?

Nothing. Not one word. The whole time.

I felt kind of awful, but you have to excuse me because I was just so fascinated by everyone else. And then we went back with everyone else. And everything was just like normal again. Only I now looked at these people in a totally different light. They said some really profound, true, and raw things. They were brave. They were amazing. And they didn't even know a lot of the others very well! Why did they open up then of all times? I don't know, but I'm glad they did. Because now I see how everyone is human. Everyone. Every single freaking person you see on the street and yell at when they cut in front of you on the interstate. EVERY. PERSON.

Do you even REALIZE how many people that is? So many. And we're all so amazingly different. And we're all so awfully stupid. And we're all so scared, hiding, hurting, but we all have the same standards of behavior which we employ to seem normal to the others, only that's not really normal, that's not the way we really are, and I just have a lot of problems understanding why anyone would want to be fake instead of the way we are.

Because what if the way we are was 'normal'? 

I judge from appearances a lot. But God has used my people watching to help that. It's really kind of cool.

People are just more awesome than you can ever understand, aren't they?