To wonder why people have stopped saying hello to me?

[Loneliest]

As pathetically lame as it sounds, I woke up crying about this despite knowing it’s a relatively insignificant issue. So sorry for the length, it’s a catharsis.

I live in a medium to large sized village and our annual fete is today, I’m still planning to attend and show my support. It’s just that over recent weeks I seem to have become ostracised. I’ve never been particularly closely involved but I tried to drink in the pub regularly and always make conversation with people on walks etc.

Something must have happened and it must be something I did or it might be all in my head but people who used to talk or at least wave hello or smile at me have gone cold. It’s been ages since anyone local spoke to me, and some people I regularly chatted with have started crossing the park when I see me. We don’t even know one another’s names so really it’s nothing to get upset about but it feels horrible.

There was a WhatsApp group for helping with dog walking when owners were unwell or otherwise indisposed. My offer to cover a morning walk was accepted but on my way there, a few minutes early, I met a neighbour coming the other way with the very dogs I’d arranged to walk. They knew I would be on my way but collected the dogs fifteen minutes before I was due to arrive. It’s nothing again but I didn’t understand why they didn’t at least say something in the group. I haven’t had any notifications from it since, they must have set up a new one as I regularly see the group members out together. Sometimes one of the group smiles at me but she never says hello anymore even tho I always do.

I know small places can be like this and I do have some very good friends here who aren’t in the pub or walking cliques. I don’t know why it’s bothering me so much. I lost two important people during lockdown and feel like I have reeked of loneliness ever since. How do I not dwell on this and go out with my head high? I don’t know whether to make eye contact or not, I feel so uncomfortable and awkward and it has put me off attending events like the fete alone.

Ask the person in the dog group who still smiles?

This sounds awful! Could you not set up your own online group? Start a new hobby?
Theres apps now that you can join where you can dog or cat sit etc? How about that?
No one should feel lonely and no one should be pushed out and left out of stuff!

And I would definitely go to the fete as well

How horrible. I would ask the person who still smiles and explain your feeling confused and hurt.

I'm so sorry, this sounds so hurtful and frustrating.
Can you find an excuse to "have to" speak to an erstwhile acquaintance (one of the nicer ones) and while talking, gently probe them a bit?
It sounds like your name has wrongly been bandied about as having done something wrong, in a neighbour dispute or something similar.

That was my first thought too

how awful for you OP that would sting at any age

That's so horrible, I've had similar years ago and it makes you feel really ill. I was going to say somewhere there's probably a toxic person behind all this, but they're nearly all behaving like school bullies so it looks like there's a few.
As pp has said talk to the woman who smiles at you.
Bastards..sorry op I wish I lived in your village x

That is awful. I am not surprised this is getting you down. It's not silly to be affected by this.

Could you ask the pub landlord what is being said?

Good idea about asking the woman who still smiles, it’s just when she’s alone her pace quickens when we pass another when it used to slow so we could exchange our usual how-are-yous. She clearly doesn’t want to.

I can’t imagine what I’ve done. I’m a bit scruffy compared to them but not to an extent you’d even notice in an urban environment. I have a quiet, calm dog who has never caused any problems.

I will try to shift my focus to the good friends I do have here. If it’s that easy to unwittingly commit whatever serious faux pas I’m guilty of then rationally I know I’m better off out of it.

They were the first people to start blanking me. I thought they hadn’t seen me the first time it happened and said ‘morning’ in the normal way but they looked right through me. They haven’t acknowledged me since. It feels like there could be a rumour going around or maybe I simply can’t fit in for whatever reason. People can be so weird!

Definitely ask especially as you don't have any idea what is causing this all. Perhaps someone said something to someone and it has got out of portion.

You have to ask someone.

Who is the most gossipy person you know? Say something like "I've been feeling really upset that people seem to be blanking me."

Gossip might say something like, "When you said you hated the vicar's wife's baking everyone thought that was terribly rude." Then you can explain, "I've been on a diet since May, so I have stopped eating baked goods until I lose a stone."

Gossip will spread your version of what happened, and you will know the story.

Added together these things seem to me to be beyond 'normal' small community cliques, especially as people have only recently started to avoid you, and its literally everyone. Its possible that there's a rumour been spread about you and people now think there's reason to avoid you. You need to ask someone. Maybe the person who accepted the dog walk then withdrew? It would be perfectly reasonable to question that.

Because people are cunts is the answer!
Maybe the pub landlord will explain what's been said. Solution? There isn't one if there is some nasty cowbag being a twat.

I get the ‘not fitting in’ thing as I had it for years myself in a village we lived in from when DS was a baby to the age of 7 — but there was no initial friendliness in my case there. Looking back, it’s not surprising. In objective ways was literally a very different person to the type of person who lived there (it was homogeneous and insular — I was foreign, an older mother, a working mother etc).

In your case, something has changed. In other people’s perception, if not in reality.

I've seen your update about the pub landlord. I'd definitely ask them. They are taking your money to drink in their establishment and blanking you, in a hospitality industry? That's beyond weird, and perfectly reasonable to ask why.

It’s everyone in those two groups, all my neighbours are exactly the same towards me as ever. My friendships with people beyond the cliques are unaltered, I’m still invited to things with other people in village as usual.

I haven’t been in the pub for a while, I was never a regular but I always felt happy to go in alone or with friends. It can’t be healthy to dwell on it too much when I know I haven’t deliberately done anything ‘wrong’.

Can you ask your neighbours and friends if they know anything? They could at least ask around for you.

Reading my OP again it’s not true that nobody local has spoken to me for a while, neighbour said hello yesterday and a parish councillor I get on well with also went out of his way to say hi. I’ll speak to him when I get a minute, since some of the people blanking me are also on the local council. I’m probably getting it out of proportion but it would be good to know in case there’s a badly crossed wire somewhere.

Thanks for hearing me out and offering suggestions. It’s not easy to tell if I’m letting it bother me unduly.

I would go to the pub tonight for a quick drink and see what happens.

Definitely ask the parish councillor! Or the village gossip as suggested. There must be some rumour or misunderstanding.

As a non British person, I have to say that I find it totally bizarre that you’ve gone this long without asking someone! You are well within your rights to want to know why people are suddenly blanking you! It could be that someone has started a malicious rumour and so your silence just adds to the weirdness. Please, please speak up and not to just one person or you might not get the whole picture at all!

It’s taken a few weeks for me to suspect that it wasn’t just isolated incidents of individuals not seeing me or being in a hurry. Even now I still hope I’m either imagining or somehow inflating it.