Taciturn

At work we are grouped into cubicles, with four people to a cube space. Our region is very chatty, except for me. I have no judgment about small talk, as a matter of fact I wish I had the ability to interact with my peers, but it is literally an excruciating exercise for me. The person who sits next to me has a comment for ever bit of minutia that takes place in a given day. Usually, people respond, but if those more socially adjusted people are away, there's only her and me. I, of course, am not as responsive to her observations. So my silence creates an awkward space, which I do not have the wherewithal to reconcile. Small talk for me is physically uncomfortable, my body feels like it's being squished and drained. Not to mention all the exponential variables of trying to understand their body language, voice inflection, facial expressions, are they being literal or facetious. Then there is the agony of being trapped in a conversation regarding a subject you just don't relate to, how do you come up with the appropriate responses for that situation. I simply do a lot of nodding and um-humming. Of course there is the ever present problem of eye contact, which I think I got licked. I simply look up to the right or left as if I'm contemplating deeply what the other person is saying. Anyway, a simple less than 5 minute chat is exhausting, all I can think about is I would rather be anywhere than caught in the jaws of a trivial conversation, and the whole time my inner #aspie is screaming, "make the pain stop"!