I’m right there, and often. I went to a party last night, and I could sense that people don’t want me to join their little small conversation groups. When I’m standing next to someone, there are awkward silences, I sense their discomfort, and I know they don’t want me around. I have other problems than stuttering, but it starts with that. My point is that I feel like we don’t get to participate in normal human engagement. We don’t get to participate in the easy give and take of conversation. Even “successes” for us, take work, and mental gymnastics, that no one knows anything about. I happen to be successful, from many of the obvious worldly measures, in the sense that I have a good career, a wife and three children, and a family with a little bit of money. People would say that that’s more than enough, and that I am lucky. But I am in anguish, mentally. Anguish, after a night like last night reminds me that nothing is fixed, nothing will change, and I know I am not “one of them”. One of the normal people. I am to be avoided. So I cannot offer anything uplifting, but I do take heart that I am not truly alone, in the sense that others feel like I do. For me, I just have to remember not to go to parties anymore. I have to remember that I have promised myself to retreat from social situations, and to not put myself through this anymore. But hang in there. I take comfort in God’s love for me, and my eternal salvation. We have the promise of a time when we will be free of this humiliation, free from this shame — and no one can take that from us. So please stay the course, endure and keep on. God knows our pain.