Demophobia

Misophonia is the hatred of some sounds, common noises really.

It includes a spectrum of small movements and twitches.

It's characterized by an inability to filter out sense memory and then having that sensory input trigger an out of proportion anger response.

It makes being around people very difficult.

There's a dissonance from knowing what manners requires of us and wanting to scream, "chew with your fucking mouth closed, sit still and spit out the fucking gum!"

Among a small group of people you can at least ask, "would you kindly stop, please?"  The more people, the less likely it is you can ask, let alone get, them to stop.

So you develop crutches to get you through the day.

Today I realized that I depend on others exhorting me to come to social events before I can confront my affliction and be around a mob of people.

Guess what didn't happen with GRPC...

There's nobody attending who's saying, "C'mon Thag!  It'll be fun!"  I didn't realize I needed someone to say that before I could even try to get my shit together and go, until today.

I realize that I was dropping hints at a couple people, who didn't pick them up, and probably didn't even realize I was hinting.  I can be wonderfully self-defeatingly vague when hinting.