tongue tied

sometimes i feel like i have been trapped inside myself.  i have a hard time saying things that i want to say.  i rehearse and re-rehearse in my mind the way i'm going to say something, and try to anticipate the response i'm going to get.  i'm always afraid that it's not going to come out right, or for some other reason i'm going to get a poor response from the other party.  maybe what i say will offend them.  maybe the so-called funny thing that i have to say won't be funny.  maybe i won't explain it right.  maybe it will just be stupid.  i do this with almost everyone and everything that is of any consequence.  something funny happened once when ___ and ___ happened…  do you have time to mail this for me today…  i really need more help doing ___…  do you want to go do ____ with me this weekend…
to make matters worse, i think i have been like this my entire life.  when i was in elementary school, i remember my "friends" laughing at me sometimes because i'd be thinking so hard about something i wanted to say, or replaying something that i had just said, that i would silently mouth the words.  i never even knew that i did this.  i also think my dad might have the same kind of problem.  my mom has told me before that he's always afraid he might do something wrong or make a mistake.  she says it's from the critical way his parents treated him when he was younger.  what if it's something i've inherited from him?  or learned from him?

all of this combines to make me feel like i have trapped myself into isolation. since i have a hard time sharing what i'm thinking, i feel like very few people really know me.  and that's my own fault.  even writing this was very hard for me, but i've been thinking about it a lot lately.