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So my uncle died a couple of months ago. Since then, I'd been dealing with what I called 'anxiety' symptoms. Unlike anxiety, it would last much longer than a panic attack and not be triggered by anything in particular. I'm not an emotional person and haven't really 'felt' things in life. I can't tell whether that's just because I'm strong emotionally or because I missed some type of milestone and no I'm out of puberty, I feel like it's pretty much permanent damage.
I've started uni and I honestly like everyone I'm around. But it's been a month and now everyone's starting to gravitate to their own social groups and I feel like I've been so busy putting up walls by being friendly to everyone and occasionally being unavailable because I'm having an 'attack', that now I'm feeling a lot better I've already missed crucial bonding with people.
All my life, I've only had fair weather friends. It hasn't really hurt me really because I didn't seek much else. When I was about 12, pretty much all of my long-term friends either abandoned me or became people I wouldn't speak to as often at pretty much the same time when I needed them the most. After that, I sort of never made any close connections to people. I've had friends for years and had no problem dropping them if their behaviours became negative. I could always make new friends, right?
Now I'm a couple years into adulthood and I made a friend I thought I could be close to last year. I knew him for the better part of a year before I realised he showed legitimate signs of sociopathy/psycopathy and started to question whether I'm socially stupid, naive, or just a magnet for these sorts of people because even though he's not the first friend I've made who shows those symptoms, he's the first person in years I actually could feel myself becoming closer to. If you can get close to a sociopath.
So while my uncle's death did a number on my mental and emotional health despite me never consciously having problems with those things before, I'm now seeing that maybe I already had a problem of being everyone's friend but no-one's friend as a way to avoid being rejected subconsciously.
The way I realised this was layers of ridiculousness. First, I was playing a game where the main character is exactly like me to a stage where it's hilarious. When the other characters imitated her, they said something about how she's 'shallow and jokes around all the time because the one thing she can't take is any form of rejection' and it kind of hit home. Even though I never spend a second thinking about whether someone doesn't like me, I don't spend time making bonds but just joke around and chat to everyone. I do genuinely like everyone so I want to be as social as possible but it makes me shallow.
Second way was my flatmates and I were chatting about one of our blockmates (so he lives in the same building but not in our flat) and they were saying how he was hard to read in terms of whether he actually liked people or not because it seemed he was friendly to everybody. I like the guy so I was like "Well, I think he likes us! If he didn't xyz... and this time xyz" but they way they described him felt like a third person's perspective on myself.
One of my other flatmates described me as a 'social butterfly' and as someone who's been isolated a lot due to health issues and the like, I was happy to accept that label. Now, it feels like a curse. I wish I wasn't such a block of nothingness and could get along with people properly.
I feel like when I can't flitter between people, I almost shut down. At first, I just shut down with whatever grief symptoms but the past couple nights out, I just almost shut down if I don't feel like there's a need for a performance or an announcement and just tune out to the music. I still like going to social events but if everyone around me is chatting and I'm just nodding my head to the beat and looking around like a lost puppy, I feel like it's my fault for not being in one of the little groups that have formed. I'll show up to the social events, chat to some people, maybe everybody at some point, but then I'll just be sitting there critiquing the music because everyone else actually has something to talk to each other about and all I can think about is how much better I'm feeling but how little chat I've got.
When a new person joins us, I spend more time chatting to them and I think it's the novelty factor. People we don't see often, new people, people from other blocks. When those guys show up, I'm suddenly back up again at full energy. Otherwise, the only chat I can do is interview style questions and answers sort of thing. I feel like I'm only good at presenting myself a certain way but not good at actually going beyond the surface. If someone gets me to talk about myself, I can suddenly pick up energy too. I think it's horrible because it's self-centered and it's like I'm only interested in other people when I want to know something.
I sat down and tried to think of each individual and how I felt about them last night. I'm so used to just seeing groups of people and maybe one of too who are fun to tease but not about whether I actually like them or whatever. I saw some people here that I'd actually be interested in getting to know and felt good that I could recognise that and differentiate between me thinking someone is likable and me actually wanting to call that person a friend.
It's only been just over a month and there's still time to form bonds and whatever but I know choosing second year housing is a round the corner and I haven't gotten on any level with anyone yet. My main friend from my course keeps threatening to go to another university and everybody else either lives out or has closer friends they'd probably want to live with. It's early days but I hate feeling like a loner when I know I've just been grieving and trying to keep on.
I think I need to stop jumping from one thing to another and all this sensation-seeking and see why I don't have any strong bonds. I've never been in a proper relationship and haven't had a best friend since I was in primary school. I have one person who I love and speak to them a lot more now since he's moved back to my city but I want him to come visit me so we can talk face to face again. I haven't told him about my uncle, even though last time I saw him was a few days after my symptoms started.
I feel like there's always an excuse for me to be alone. First it was my chronic illness that I fought off and now it's this grief. I don't want it to be like this anymore. I think I'm so emotionally stupid that it's taken this long to realise that it's not boredom - it's loneliness. Doesn't matter how strong you are, if you feel like everyone around you is getting along while you're just a hype-man, you're gonna feel it.
A flatmate is the only person I told because his friend committed suicide not long after we started and he was really hit by it. I said to him that he shouldn't feel bad for isolating himself and that he should let himself grieve. I told him another day that I'd lost my uncle and had been a mess since and etc. It was good I guess to open up to someone, even if I felt it was obligatory since he'd opened up to me.
I want to be able to organise myself a lot better because my sleep-pattern is really screwed up after the insomnia I had when my uncle died and actually get closer to people. I don't know how I'm going to do that though because it felt so natural when I became close to the sociopath from last year.
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