Trying to put myself out there is a disaster.

I’ve been trying, over the last 6 months or so, to force myself to attend social situations and build up confidence.

I have joined a knitting group, and that has gone mostly well. I find it easier to talk to people when I can keep my head down a my hands busy knitting. It isn’t the best way to get socializing, I still get really anxious and uncomfortable, but it is a start. My neighbor also attends these and she is very chatty, so I don’t feel as much pressure to talk because she can go on for hours.

The second thing I have done is join the local community theatre, where I am going to be assisting the company’s Producer. I felt like this would be would be an excellent opportunity to project whatever personality I WANTED, like a ‘new start’. My neighbor isn’t there as a buffer, so I will be forced to communicate with people.

There has only been one event so far, I am new to the theatre and so I mainly observed/shadowed, and it is already going badly.

There is a person there, who seems to not like me. Already!

She is the choreographer and the director’s girlfriend. She was friendly with the rest of the group, she has clearly worked with several of them before. There was hugging and excited talk amongst them. We were introduced and that is as far as our verbal interactions went.

She spent the rest of the night giving me cut eye from the corner of her eye, turning her back to me in order to stand between me and everyone else. When I went to stand next to her while I listened to the director and the producer spoke about set design on stage, she walked away from me after 10 seconds. She didn’t go anywhere special or do anything, just went away from me.

What the fuck. What am I supposed to do now? This was two weeks ago and because of delays in production I’ve had to sit and stew getting more and more anxious thinking about how I have to interact with this person again.

I am thinking about backing out, but I don’t think that is fair. It took me so long to work up the courage to even contact the theatre in the first place, and it took months of putting myself out there repeatedly to keep following up with the obviously scatterbrained producer.

I feel like I’ve confirmed my worries, that people will automatically not like me, even if I don’t open my mouth. I don't know what to do, or how to react in this situation. Any advice would be appreciated.