Most of the time, I don’t need people. They’re irrelevant. I can manage ok without them, better in fact as I find people tiring. I have to smile and laugh and pretend everything is fine. It’s so much easier by myself. I can relax and be myself – even if that means crying in a corner. At least I have that freedom when I’m alone. But every so often I find myself reaching out. Trying to find someone to listen to me, to accept me – to like me. I want acceptance and to be admired. I want people to be surprised by my intellect – to find me witty and insightful – all the things we would like to be. I know I’m not. I’m average – always have been. I suppose it’s natural to feel disappointed when I’m less than brilliant. I know I need to learn to accept me as being unexceptional but there are times when I have trouble. I want to be more than I am. Which is stupid, I know.
I want people to like me. But I’m not a naturally likeable person. I have no charm or charisma. I’ve never been able to make friends. In my life I’ve interacted with people, but they soon drift away. Nobody stays and even when they’re around there’s no closeness – no camaraderie. At some point I usually find out that the people I thought were friends had parties or get togethers with the others but not me. I was always left out. So now I reach out on place like this. Leaving comments and occassional posts venting my spleen at the world because there’s no-one who I feel that I can talk to in real life. And then I get upset and feel even MORE alone when I don’t get the vast numbers of comments that my stupid narcarcistic ego seems to crave even though I KNOW it’s stupid.
Why can’t I just be happy on my own?
Why can’t I just accept that I will never have the adulation that I seem to want (which is reasonable since I’ve done nothing to deserve any)?
Why do I insist on reaching out when I know that it will only make me feel worse?
Don’t worry. I don’t expect any answers. I’m just being stupid as usual.
2 comments
There are few things more common than the wish to be remarkable. I don’t know who said that originally, but I agree. Most people don’t want to be just another boring face in the crowd. ‘I’m special – my mom told me so’.
After you hit a certain age maybe it won’t bother you anymore. After you reach middle age, haven’t achieved any of your dreams, and you’ve got a few failed marriages behind you and you’re suffocating under a mountain of debt, you’ll be able to look back at this period of your life and laugh as you reminisce about the good ole days.
Best wishes.
“Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won’t either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.â€
― Louise Erdrich, The Painted Drum LP