I’ve been really itchy today. Just really need to pour out the contents of my head right now. Writing this while I’m in the lab. I don’t think I’ve ever done that. But was too itchy.
I’m unsure where to start. I don’t understand people or how talk to them. For the most part, I kinda hate (too strong a word?) people. I don’t like being around them. I don’t like talking to them. So the majority of my life I never tried. Now I’ve whined on here before about being lonely and seeing other people be happy together with their friends and lovers and all that. I think I like the idea of what people could be, but really don’t like what they actually are. I think this is where the delusions kick in. I have these fantasies about having friends and being in a relationship, but the actual practice of talking and getting to know people is agonizing. And I hate it even more when I have to talk to people I don’t want to be friends with. So I stay away from people for the most part. Especially at the lab. Asking for help is agonizing. Being around people is agonizing. So I’ve always wanted to be the person who doesn’t need anyone or anything from anyone. But I am a useless man. So what do you call a useless man that doesn’t need anyone? A bizarre waste of space? A walking contradiction? A dead man.
I show up today and see nobody in lab. I thought that was great. Love it. Literally 5 minutes later someone walks in. The Post Doc that also happens to be my land lord. I see him wave hi to be polite, but immediately want to get back to doing my own thing as usual. He walks up to me and starts asking questions about my progress. This is natural. People do this to be friendly. But it is agony. I tell him I’m trying to fix this one issue with the wrong size D shaft. He actually gives me good advice that I’m going to use. He then goes on to tell me that I should write up all the issues with my design for future consideration in my Thesis. Normal competent engineers already do this. But in my head I took it as they know it’s a bad design and a failure and that if I highlight that, I might be spared a bit. But that makes no sense, you’re probably thinking. Of course it’s nonsense, but I can’t help but see it as a slight. Very silly I know. I go to ask another person for advice later, but take a question she asks me as another slight. I live in my own head. I know it’s bad, but being around people just doesn’t work for me.
But what about on the opposite spectrum. When I want to get to know a person too much and try to be too forward. Very very few times has this happened. But when it does happen, it’s like being pulled by a magnetic force. I was talking to my psych yesterday and I couldn’t help spill my guts about stuff I’ve never talked about. I almost told him about this place by accident. I’ve said it before, but he’s oddly disarming. Then I mentioned her. The only person who I’ve opened up to completely. The one who I told about this place. And I tried to reason out why I did that. I told him my theory. That it was to manipulate her into being friends. He asked if that’s really why I did it and I told him I didn’t know. That’s the part that scares me. Was my forwardness and openness a tactic used to force someone to be my friend? I still don’t know why I tried for as long as I did. Even after she stopped talking to me. What made those two, the psych and the girl, so special that I felt compelled to tell them stuff. When I hold every single thought in my head so close to the vest. When I despise talking to the people right in front of me. I’ve said before that humans are unpredictable. That’s a large part of the reason why I hate other people. It’s that unpredictability that makes being around them agonizing and what compels me to try so hard with those special people.
This post was absolute nonsense. All my thoughts feel so scattered, but I just had to get them out there.
2 comments
I often wonder if I invested wrong, investing so much time gathering data about people. There was a choice made there, by who or whom I’m not sure. There was the option though to focus on other passions. It was purely a defensive decision, at the time it appeared that the most successful people knew how to charm and smile their way through situations, so I decided to spend time working on that. Sales. Ugh, never made any money at it.
I’ve spent 19 years, 5 of them in university learning to predict and manipulate people. Yet consider our two positions, both of us are fairly lost, fairly useless in one way or another. So both paths, I’m assuming yours was math or physics, are equally fraught with failure.
You may well say I have romantic success, but I’d say that’s observer bias. The trauma that forced the change before I met the person I am with now, I’ll never be sure if it was worth the cost. The cost was already paid, so redeeming it, using it to teach myself to be less vulnerable was the least I could do.
The tighter you hold things, the more gaps there seem to be, on that last bit. Keeping to yourself is counter intuitive. It’s easier to be alone by monitoring anyone with even the slightest chance of getting close. Risk management is easier than damage control.
All people are fools, to the last. The least foolish know that.
Okay, first of all I would say that part of why it’s easy for people to relate to each other on sp is because being honest makes you vulnerable. And vulnerability makes us all a little easier to sympathize with. In the real world this process can be achieved usually at a much slower rate. Superficial things like secondary sex characteristics, race, gender, age and height can severely affect verbal communication way before a conversation even begins. For better or worse people are just more honest hidden behind a device. And yet we crave contact perhaps the most of any species. In a lot of ways, we are kind of doomed as a species.
Sorry, i’m rambling. I hope you can get over your anxiety of meeting people though, some of the best life projects will involve human collaboration. We can’t hold this thing together by ourselves. We’ll drown in the ether if that’s the case.