Best post I can offer right now

I come here. I start a post. I stop writing after five words because I don´t know why I would want to post my thoughts on a blog written by a person who has nothing much to do with myself. The person who has been writing this blog – she simply isn´t me anymore. I´m not her anymore, and I don´t have her largely imaginary problems.

Well. Okay, maybe that´s unfair. But this blog doesn´t really offer room anymore for the feelings I have and for the things that prey on me. I don´t really have a place for that anymore and this bugs me. I want to communicate my thoughts and experiences, but I no longer want to do so in the context of mental health issues. I feel so disconnected from the vast majority of my posts on here. Even now I´m trying to create room for what I really want to talk about, instead of actually getting to talk about it.

Could it be that many people only feel drawn to mental health issues or define themselves as mentally ill because it allows them to talk openly about their emotions? Could this, even when they actually are ill, be part of what stops them from getting well? The threat that if they get well they can´t dwell on their inner experience anymore? Am I not myself constantly looking for a justification to talk about myself, analyze myself, muse on psychological questions? But why does it take a justification? Shouldn´t it be enough that it´s sort of well written? Isn´t it silly how much of a taboo it is to talk about ourselves, yet we are so addicted to it that we make up all sorts of dumb excuses to do it anyway? Like: “I´m only analyzing myself in detail because I hope it will help me become a better person/get rid of my illness?” It´s not even like we don´t believe in those stories! But if we absolutely need a justification, should we maybe try to find better ones? Some that don´t require we stay ill forever so we get to talk about ourselves and be taken seriously?

When I try to write a blog post on here I feel like I´m locked inside a story of which I no longer am the protagonist. It´s someone else´s story I´ve been trying to live, and I´m growing very, very tired of it. Even resent it, as it is the story I deemed more worthwhile than my own. And not just the story – the person. I presented myself as a person I thought was more valuable than the person I really am. I don´t like that person anymore. Hell, I don´t even like that kind of person when I encounter her in real life. I used to think that´s unfair, but is it, really? Is anyone entitled to being liked by me?

Is this meant by the sanctity of feelings? That you cannot demand people stop having a specific feeling because it is immoral to feel that way? Is it really immoral to demand for someone to have different feelings about a subject? I have contrary intuitions on that. I´ll need to think about that when I´m less tired.

 

 

The compulsion to entertain false beliefs

If I have any aim in my personal development (which is far from linear), it is achieving what I would call one possible definition of sanity: The absence of any internal psychological compulsion to believe something radically false.

In my view, such a compulsion would not so much stem from genuinely unconscious motives, memories and impulses, but rather from cognitive dissonance. I have had my fair share of experience with false beliefs and delusions based on cognitive dissonance, and maybe even more than my fair share. While someone who clings to an obviously deluded opinion which is completely out of line with his original ideas and his very own interests might not technically be psychotic, his reality testing is obviously impaired. Not by any traceable illness, but, as it seems, by his foolish attempts at avoiding an injury to his self-esteem. And that, for anyone with intellectual standards, is a humiliating place to be in.

It is a situation that shows me my personal limits like no other. Right from the start, there have always been times when I tried to believe the opposite of beliefs I knew to be false, and yet as soon as I stopped intentionally agonizing over how wrong I was, the false beliefs would slip back in place. Not completely, more in the sense of double bookkeeping. My previous realization that specific beliefs of mine were false would remain without consequence. I would, for example, acknowledge that my family was not actually abusive, and yet still perceive and treat them as hostile. When noticing my behavior, I would seek rationalizations for it which relied on very sinister interpretations of events that, other than my original stories, had actually taken place, thus making my explanations seemingly conform to reality as I knew it while still having the necessary exonerating effect.

From what I´ve gathered, some studies on cognitive dissonance show that people who are faced with contrary arguments or even evidence tend to cling to their opinions even more fiercely. If that is the case, then telling myself how wrong I am and agonizing over my foolishness and the embarrassment of it is actually going to predispose me for another relapse! And yet this is precisely the “cure” I´ve been administering whenever I came close enough to even seeing in which way I was ill.

The motive behind that line of action was my idea that in order to cleanse or rid myself of the past, I had to suffer for it. I still sort of sympathize with this view, but I might be overlooking the price I already payed. Fact is, most of the things I agonize over happened 10+ years ago, so my whole occupation with them doesn´t seem quite adequate in the first place. But that aside, those are 10 years which could have been productive. Productive, happy, adventurous. They were so to some extent, and I wouldn´t want to miss most of them, but there was always an element of gloom and self-loathing which wouldn´t have needed to be there.

I do need to sort out my belief system. But I´m doing myself and my connection to reality a great disservice if I try to make it intentionally painful. It is my good days, not my bad days that brought me to the point of even recognizing my errors. I said before that depression is an enemy of the truth. You have a much greater chance of looking at things objectively if you decrease the need to interpret everything in your favour. Depression, however, only makes you more sensitive towards anything that could be seen as failure.

I fear that I cannot muster up the mental strength to reality-test my beliefs. Some people in my past have hurt me a great deal with what they said, and I don´t know if I could stand coming to the conclusion that they were justified in doing so. The thought evokes a sense of despair, like: Was I right in absolutely nothing? Can´t I even rely on the notion that what hurts me cannot be alright? Unfortunately, that is pretty much what going crazy does to you.

Already we are back in the realm of self-punishment. Torturing myself with such ideas gives me a certain sense of satisfaction, at least as long as I can stand them even though I initially thought I couldn´t. It might actually be useful of sorts, but, like I said: Only if I can stand it. If I realize I can´t and stop, I have renewed the cognitive dissonance and in turn my need to entertain false beliefs.

Maybe this phenomenon can be compared to exposure therapy in the treatment of anxiety disorder. It is only effective if the patient makes the experience that he can stand the situation he was scared of. If he ends it prematurely, he makes the opposite experience. Today anxiety patients frequently receive drug treatment, too, so they have to work through less fear during the exposure in the first place, rendering success more likely. Similarly, if I was less depressed, I would probably be more tolerant towards the idea that I was wrong and that others were right telling me so and reacting negatively to it even though it was torture for me at the time. By accepting this idea, I could free myself from the need for it to not be true, which would open up the possibility of looking at the whole thing with fresh eyes.

There are still some therapists, however, who believe that drug treatment takes away from the effectiveness of exposure therapy because the patient isn´t forced to confront the real extent of his anxiety. Likewise, some have the idea that those who take antidepressants don´t want to face themselves. I´m inclined to believe, though, that a stable mood actually facilitates this task.

 

My fundamental error

I feel distraught. I feel a strange mercilessness towards myself; like I will no longer let myself get away with something that was a larger part of my life than I realized.

I think it is all that writing advice that I read. So much about what to keep in mind for the benefit of your audience. I looked over my blog from a distance and I saw how much I ramble and how incoherently I write. And I wondered why it ever occurred to me to publish that. It seems like nothing that belongs in front of an audience. Did I simply lose sight of the fact that there is a difference between a real and an imagined audience? Between a panel of imaginary judges and actual readers?

I think what really makes me qualify as unbalanced is the carelessness with which I put things out in the open that have no business being there. When I started this blog I didn´t want to wait anymore until I had something to say that would benefit an actual audience. I simply longed to be somebody, to have some sort of identity. My model was a fellow blogger with a series of mental disorders who had won several awards for the way she was writing about her life. It actually is an amazing blog. I was just very much mistaken in believing I could create, leave alone be something similar. In trying to do so, however, I merely managed to show just how incredibly fragile my ego is.

Some philosopher said that Homer wouldn´t have written the Iliad if he had been an Achilles. I have often wished to be the character of a novel more than to be the author. A blog seemed to be a fairly easy way to achieve that. Unfortunately, though, even as a blogger I don´t get to decide what history I come with or what dark truth is lurking underneath my confusion. Despite the ease with which people claim identities for themselves nowadays, you don´t become an Achilles by slapping a label on yourself and defining your voice as representative of said label. I cannot resolve my fundamental disdain for myself by treating identities as nothing more than a convenience.

When I was reading to children at a local kindergarten, they often pointed to the pictures in the books, yelling: “That´s me!” – “That´s me!” and, if the desired identity was already taken, they would compromise: “Okay, then that´s me!” Sometimes, of course, they would also quarrel. You got to be the coolest girl in the other book, now it´s my turn! Having to compare myself to five-year-olds is not very flattering, but I did have a similar take on reality for an uncomfortably long stretch of time. On some level I did believe that you could make yourself a certain kind of person just by saying so. And this is also, ultimately, what was behind my ability to believe I had amnesia. It was not my reason for doing so, but it enabled me to do so.

Reality itself still seems incredibly unlikely to me, starting with the idea that I could possibly have erred so much. Yet at the same time I feel that by understanding my error I´m making an experience that transcends the fundamental gap between me and the thinkers I admired most. I always knew I was wrong in some way, and now that I can see my foolishness, I have a lot more respect for myself.

Reality, however, has some far darker truths to offer, and I´m not sure if I will be capable of accomodating my self-image to them, too. Unfortunately, though, I feel like a lot more than just my self-respect depends on that. This reality is the experience and the history life has to offer me, and if I fail to take them, I will forever be a person of no substance.

Well, didn´t I miss being sane!

You can probably tell that I wasn´t quite myself in my last two posts. I have a file on my computer dedicated to more of what I´d like to call “my new psychosis”, as I can clearly feel – however accurate what I say may be – that I say it in a state of madness. I now recognize fixed ideas and sudden, manic obsessions in myself; not so much by their content, but by the accompanying feelings. That would typically be: Excitement to the point of physical arousal, absurd euphoria that can give way to megalomaniacal optimism, and the feeling that something big is about to happen and bring by the great change that will make all that I know as misery obsolete.

You wouldn´t think I had such feelings judging by the content of the stuff I last wrote. Indeed, this started out as increased inner conflict and being upset about possibly contradicting myself and changing my mind on things, and then it turned into a barely controlled self-destruction orgy. The resulting feelings are, unfortunately, highly addictive, and they also are the last thing I´d ever want anybody to see in me. And yet I seem to depend on that, as after a few days I suddenly lost the ability to make me feel them myself. At first it was actually hard to bring myself down like that, but then it got incredibly easy, to the point that I thought I could really cope with anything life threw at me because I´d learned how to drop my ego and let it shatter. Or I guess maybe I actually did know better, because like I said:  By now I know madness when I feel it. My judgement was dulled, though; I might as well have been drunk. I guess you could pin it down to a complete lack of sleep, though. I´m clinging to reasonable explanations, which might not be so unreasonable, given that last night was the first night in five that I slept more than roughly four hours. Anyway. Lack of sleep explains the when, it doesn´t explain the what-the-hell-do-I-do-about-this.

I regularly sit there, cranky as it gets, and I want to scream for someone to take me apart and beat the hell out of me for being everything I am because I need it so much I could punch a wall. Trouble is that I can´t communicate this. I can tell someone what to do (if I´m allowed to assume a different identity, speak in vast circumscriptions and a foreign language), but I can´t tell anyone what I want to feel, leave alone let them witness it. I cannot tell anyone my intention behind this, that is the beliefs that drive me, since they feel so damn genuine in the moment and that is at odds with everything I represent. Without this kind of honesty, though, actually doing anything (such as taking a beating) would miss the point. The subtext is sorely needed.

In fantasy, this is solved by mind-reading, but if anyone in reality failed to go through the necessary steps of establishing consent, it would give me very bad vibes and I wouldn´t want to go any dark corners with that person, leave alone those of my mind. So there´s really no way around this problem. And as it is, that drives me up the walls.

A comparatively reasonable post

It is one of my sore points that I have failed writing. But for all my claims that I´m a failure and for all my arguing that writing tips cannot help me, I never admitted to myself that I see something wrong with my writing.

 

I cannot separate my writing from myself. It was never a discipline which I had to conquer if I wanted to claim it for myself. It was part of my anatomy. To dislike my writing is to dislike myself. Not that it doesn´t happen quite regularly.

Writing was never something I could feel enhanced me or made me a more experienced person, someone who had learned and evolved in the process. It wasn´t a process I underwent that left me beatified and wiser. And yet I jealously claimed it for myself – maybe precisely because I couldn´t get that fundamental experience out of it. I feel unworthy.

I feel unworthy because I never put proper effort in my writing. I wrote the way I knew how to write and I alternately demanded and angsted that/if this was good enough, but I would never seriously have considered the idea that my writing could be better. I never truly worked to convey that special spark that I felt when thinking up stories, I only waited for the ability to communicate it to come.

This is not about pleasing others. It is about communicating, putting to paper the thing that made me live in this story and become the characters.

Writing tips indeed do not reach the core of this problem. This is not about writing an objectively good text or pleasing an audience, it is about getting across precisely the feelings the story evoked in me when it came to my mind. It is difficult, as what is so evocative typically is the story´s summary which comes in form of a drastic contrast or a bittersweet message. The question I really need to ask myself is how to draw that out over the course of the entire story. There will be many single feelings and emotion-ridden scenes, but how do I make the final picture, from a step away,  evoke what I want it to evoke? And this is the part I never worked at hard enough. I wrote one scene that conveyed it all, and then I gave up. I´m good at writing symbolic first paragraphs with tons of foreshadowing, but I feel I´m ruining everything by writing anymore.

The thought that writing could become something manageable, something I know how to do, is very exciting.

Undoing myself, for better or for worse

If it is true that our greatest fears typically deal with things that have already happened, then I´m fighting a battle that was lost long ago. I´m struggling to justify being who I am, but I feel an increasing alienation towards the me that is doing the struggling. In my mind it takes the form of a noisy, querulent fanatic who is rabidly enthusiastic about every miniscule way in which he can prove his opponents wrong.

My most treacherous feelings are those which contradict what this self-righteous mouthpiece is saying. Their existence is humiliating, but it is quixotic of me to assume that this makes them an illness that must be removed. They are legit. They exist. My feelings contradict my stated beliefs, which means that I state them despite knowing better. What I do is highly unreasonable. I only need to look at my feelings in order to know what is true, at least in terms of the truth I´m looking for. What I do is ill.

Looked at from the depths of my heart I see a troll when I look at myself. I see someone who will humourously contradict everything she resents, a false note in her voice, because humour means she doesn´t have to answer to anyone. I see someone who is using humor in order to justify reprehensible things. I see an abuser.

At this point nausea hits me straight in the stomach and I cannot go on anymore. There´s nowhere to go from this thought. There is no darker thought I can use to punish myself for what I am. I´ve gone from hurting my pride to a much darker place. Trying to challenge myself to stomach even worse thoughts in order to get relief or as a form of atonement seems like a highly indecent act to me. The worst punishment is to dwell on that thought without considering it a punishment. It should come naturally to me. But since I´m apparently emotionally too twisted to react appropriately to the graveness and the reality of my guilt, maybe I should pay my debt to humanity by denying myself things I enjoy. It is the only shot at relative decency that I have. The only way to prove I at least vaguely understand the depth of my guilt, even though I´m incapable of emotionally taking it seriously.

When I look at this groveling, castrated part of me, I see a rapist who was put in a ward for the criminally insane for life because he can never be expected to develop true moral feelings, which is also why everybody turns away in disgust when he whines about how remorseful he is. He is just one step below fully human, and so am I.

 

 

Maelstrom

Chapter 1

Demoralisation: To believe you have no right to call others out on their wrongdoings (or to utter any moral opinion at all), because you yourself have done things that were wrong. One of the weapons most frequently used in any kind of argument where peoples´ self-worth is at stake.

The problem with this weapon is that it is not purely evil. Making people reconsider their own ability to conform to moral standards can stop them from being punitive, unforgiving and judgemental towards others. But where is the line between that and opening the floodgates for legitimizing all kinds of reprehensible actions?

Given that this is a subject of plenty of movies, I can hardly be alone with my own struggle against demoralization. In movies, however, the evil the demoralized person is faced with quite conveniently is so massive that it is possible to feel entitled to fight it despite being not a laudable person oneself. Also, the quiet voice in his head that tells him otherwise will be personified through The Villain, whom the demoralized person “mustn´t let win” (this is typically a line said by the supportive friend, colleague or lover). Giving in to demoralization and depressing thoughts becomes a moral evil itself, which is why the protagonist is justified in feeling good about himself again. In fact, he is very much supposed to, because otherwise evil will prevail.

There are attempts at interpreting real life that way, too. The easiest example is the way some abuse survivors see themselves getting well as “the best possible revenge”. Not everybody has a bona fide villain in their life, though. Other than themselves, I mean. The lack of an evil, sadistic genius who is responsible for all those problems and complications can be the most demoralizing thing of all.

Not that this isn´t just another typical narrative. The paranoid, vengeful guy who believes everyone is after him, only to realize sometime late in the movie that he is merely trying to run from taking responsibility for the tragedies that happened in his life. Can we maybe go beyond this hackneyed plot twist, though, and ask ourselves how on earth we are supposed to know which of those two anti-heros we are?

The ultimate answer pop-culture has for that is the phrase “but deep inside we know”. Unfortunately I suck at that, so it´s of no great help to me. Also, I find it highly illogical to ask someone to “just look into their hearts” when we are living in a world which accepts that emotions can actually prevent us from looking at stuff realistically. This concept is rather popular, so apparently it hits a nerve with quite a lot of people, but for me it is useless.

Chapter 2

I always feel the presence of a villain hovering above me, giving me reasons why it is not okay to be who I am. I know that he cannot be real and that he must therefore fulfill some psychological purpose for me, and I guess this purpose is that my need to fight him is the only thing that can justify remaining the person I am. Having to prove a point against a superior force idealizes my being me and turns it into something worthwhile, which it might not, in fact, be.

What would become of me if you took the belief in that villain away? It wouldn´t make sense to me anymore who I am. I would see nothing glamourous or romantic in it. I´d probably be ashamed of the deluded defiance that made me be proud of staying me for so long. My self-image would be turned on its head. Instead of automatically assuming future greatness, I would have to come to the conclusion that I am a mess. Someone who should be glad if he will at some point manage the daily challenges of staying sane.

Another classical narrative. At worst labeled “inspiring”. I guess I should be prepared to answer to why I believe I have the right to devaluate so many peoples´positive emotions. The expected answer, of course, is not an actual rationale based on persuasive arguments, but an explanation what horrible emotional screwed-up-ness makes me do such a horrible, screwed-up thing, along with the admission that I probably need to change. Since I made the mistake of being clever, no one is going to believe me that I honestly don´t know, so we´d better come up with something; something really incriminating.

Chapter 3

My rational mind, that which carries my original sense of normalcy, tells me that there is a way out of this and that it is okay to be who I am. I don´t think, though, it refers with these statements to all my states of mind and all the things I´ve done. It very stubbornly seems to ignore some of these, particularly those which make me feel very afraid of myself.

My treacherous heart, on the other hand, is full of them; and inside of it lurks the insidious notion that not only am I a terrible person, in order to ever stop getting into situations which will lead to anxiety, guilt and fear of exposure, I need to break with my personality structure and accept that what I become after that will not be under my control.

Self-destruction drive

Something I have great trouble with when I´m in this depressive, masochistic mindset described yesterday is that I´m having a hard time keeping the rules I made up for my own protection, that is: To not read anything that could trigger more rage and humiliation or increase my inner tension.

About two and a half months ago I stopped reading that one psychotherapy forum I was definitely too invested in emotionally. I´d spent too much time being angry at the people there, or feeling sorry for some obvious victims of therapy and trying to formulate my answers in a way that kept me out of fights while getting my point across. Aside from the aspect of time-wasting, though, most importantly I wanted to remove myself from those peoples´ voices and opinions. I was hoping that my new real life duties and the study of science would speed up that recovery. Maybe even allow for my previous ability to think rationally to return. Instead, however, I became depressed.

I always have withdrawal symptoms when I´m online – the Internet seems boring, something seems to be missing, I don´t have any place to visit. For a while I could replace it with the NaNoWriMo forums, but that´s pretty much over now (and besides, some stuff on there made me angry, too). This kind of drama addiction really runs deep. I still feel like I was pulled away from a fight I needed to win, or from a puzzle I needed to solve, and at times I rebel against it on the inside.

On really depressed days, however, I don´t want to return in order to finally prove all my thoughts right; I want to return in order to get myself hurt. I want to read things that trigger me in the hope that finally something inside of me will break and that rock-bottom humility, that icky moral masochism will take me over and not go away again, no matter what happens.

When you support an inconsistent football team as a fairly new fan, you might find yourself always  wavering between extremes. When your team wins, you think everything is looking up, everything is going to be okay, you´re never going to lose again. When your team loses, you are convinced that you´re going to get relegated, or at least that you´re permanently a mid-table team and that all your wins were down to good luck or bad opposition.  I feel like I´m a little bit like that, and that´s exhausting. Instead of aiming to not let defeats drag me down so much, I aim for not rising so high when I win. Maybe that makes sense, it might be more economic, who knows. (But then again, is it, really? Constantly having to suppress happy thoughts and visions of success? Getting OCDish about it and knocking on wood every time I have one? That´s annoying and destracting.)

But there is more to the urge to make myself miserable. To some extent it is just very morbid curiosity. When I´m depressed I feel both more ill and more sane. I feel like I finally have the opportunity to get intimate with what I´m running from when I´m not depressed. I kind of hope that this way I don´t have to be afraid anymore in the future, that I will be free. But I´ve shown yesterday how this is an illusion, how my demons will always and forever pin the fault on me. If it doesn´t shatter me, if it doesn´t change me, I´m doing it wrong. Still, I just haven´t given up on the possibility that I could free myself if only I could make myself agree with every accusation and then see how long it really stings. If it wasn´t for that other part of me that says: “But if those accusations don´t demoralize you anymore, have you gained inner strength or have you lost your morals?”, I might just do it.

Appeasement

Today was a very bad day depression-wise. On days like these I have this vague feeling that it should be allowed to officially distance yourself from the person you are. To say: “I acknowledge that I am a horrible, useless person and I want nothing to do with myself. Please hold that in my favor while you exorcise that person.”

The triggers for this were as trivial as it gets. Last night I whined to my mother about how difficult studying is and how I hate all my fellow students, from which I woke up feeling pathetic; and then I realized that I´m broke again, one week before Christmas, with zero presents bought. It´s not that much of a desaster, I have some money put aside which I can access easily and I´ll probably get some for Christmas, too, so I will neither have to starve nor tell my parents. It still sucks, though, because a) I´ve proven once again that I´m incapable of managing my finances and b) I´ll have to run around like a penitent for the rest of the month questioning every bloody chocolate bar I buy. Maybe part b) is actually worse.

I´m trying humour, and I´m trying hard work. Studying helps, but underneath my almost manic behavior is a steadily deepening abyss of horror. Maybe it has to do with the penitent role my depression forces me into currently. I´m play-acting that I´ve learned something from this, or that I´ve changed in some way, that I´m now the kind of person who studies hard and forgets about how pissed off she is that other students appear to have an easier time, but this is just a perversion of my real feelings. In fact, I am so crushed, frustrated and tense that I have no idea where to go from there. This moral masochism is the only way I can move into any direction; and while I´m really trying to feel what it suggests to me, I know that as soon as I feel better again, it will pass.

I feel very anxious about happy thoughts right now. To think, for example, that I can drop the act if I pass my upcoming exam, even seems to jinx me. I don´t deserve it, both morally and judging from what I learned yet (but mostly morally), it would be better for me if I failed it because if I pass that would allow me to still think of myself as superior to the other students, and therefore, I must make a pledge to stay in this masochistic mindset even if I pass. In trying to pass this test, I´m essentially fighting myself. It´s like a part of me is hell-bent on sabotaging me in order to put me to justice. I´m not going to contradict that part, as this only seems to make it stronger, and besides, it has so much power over me that I simply don´t dare make it “angry”. The only thing it approves of is rock-bottom humility.

I´m sometimes tempted to give it what it wants. It wouldn´t be difficult to figure out. But then, at some point, another part of me cries out and asks me what I´m doing here. Don´t I want to maintain some sincereity? Can I still bear looking at myself after groveling like that? Isn´t it just a cheap thrill, anyway? Am I throwing away years of defensiveness for what will probably be nothing? Do I want to compromise myself like that?

It´s true that quite possibly nothing would come from it. To every internal accusation I would say “yes, it is like that, and yes, I feel awful and pathetic for it, please help me change.” The reply would be: “Well, you´ll have to stop being like that yourself, you can´t expect someone else to sort you out. It´s your responsibility!” To which I would say: “But I don´t know what!” The reply: “Well, think harder!” – “I´m thinking as hard as I can, it´s like my head is going to explode!” – “Actually you don´t want to think of anything. You don´t really want to change, you are not sincere, you are phony, you´re every bit as bad as you were before. You have not really distanced yourself from who you are!” And there goes my peace of mind. Nothing about me is acceptable.

 

 

Failing the social part of college – again

The best summary of my experience with social interactions is given by Dexter (novel, not TV show) as he watches Cody´s first encounter with the boy scouts: I still remembered the pain of it; realizing that this was all and forever something for the others and never for me – that laughter, friendship, the sense of belonging, were things I would never really feel. (…) I remembered the dreadful clumsiness of those first years of trying (…), watching with such intense focus for a hint of belonging that would never come.

When I started to pursue my new course of studying I was determined to do everything right this time. Be an industrious student, get to know people, participate, belong. I mostly managed the “industrious” part. The rest, however? Blatant failure. I have not magically stopped being weird. If anything, I appear even weirder. I barely even see a hint of subculture in anyone from my classes. I don´t even know what good it would do me if there were a lot of goths, punks and metalheads around, since I´ve always been an outcast among the outcasts, but it would at least be a little reassuring, maybe? Then again, I actually don´t know if I register as “subculture” with others, my style is rather tame by now.

I´m not even sure, to be honest, if it´s really my fellow students who feel I don´t belong. Of course they will have noticed that I´ve not made any friends yet, but it´s not like no one talks to me, ever. It might actually be me myself who lacks the sense of belonging. Hence the quote.

I think much of my depression of the last few weeks stems from the fact that I noticed I was still as weird, of me feeling there was no one there in a crowd of a thousand people I could spontaneously relate to, and that once again I was doing everything wrong again. Withdrawing, instead of approaching people. Shutting down instead of talking to the people next to me. Reading during breaks. Secretly hoping that I don´t meet anyone on the way from the train station. It was not just my anxiety, but also my very own needs that made me repeat the same old pattern.

Going back to uni after more than a year since my last lecture was a shock. The crowds. The noises. The constant stimuli. So many faces, so many gazes to avoid. I found myself smiling awkwardly whenever I went through a crowd, a half-assed attempt at nonverbal communication, not sure if anyone was taking notice of me or not. It didn´t take long until I loathed how small the hallways were, how narrow the platforms, how slow the people. I felt violent surges of aggression at every obstacle, every noise, every interruption of my attempts at studying somewhere in the hall. Then I stopped going to lectures and spent as much time studying alone at home as I could. It makes me feel like a miserable failure. I feel like I should have pushed myself harder, like I should try harder to belong, and to feel like I belong. It seems to me as if, by feeling alienated from my fellow students, I´ve proven myself unworthy of this whole course of study. It seems like a bright and clear sign that says: “Not for you, apparently. Go on searching.” Or maybe: “Are you sure this is the right thing for you if you feel so alienated? Sure there has to be a group of people where you fit in?”

Yes. Nerds. The only people I consistently get along with are nerds. Unfortunately, though, I don´t give rat´s ass about Starwars, computers and theoretical physics, so I guess that´s ruled out as a career choice. Precisely because of that, even with my nerd pals I often zone out, quit listening and feel like I don´t belong. The difference is that they don´t find it weird. They simply aren´t as pushy as normal people. Befriending them doesn´t require being on Facebook, smiling a lot and drinking beer. They don´t feel threatened, offended or provoked in some way by unorthodox behaviors. They don´t demand explanations, leave alone justifications, as normal people regularly do. Maybe it is some form of caring on their part, but I find it hard to perceive it as such. As far as I´m concerned, the constant inquisition as to why I don´t have Facebook and whatnot is pushy.

In a way I feel sorry for potentially pushing away people who might at least not be completely disinterested in me, at least not from the start, but I simply don´t know what to do with them. I don´t want to get Facebook. I don´t want to argue about getting or not getting Facebook. And I don´t want to be told by kids who are 6+ years younger than me what I need to do. Also, I don´t want to have to explain myself if I´m tired and my eyes are puffy since I had a breakdown the night before. Not when the only two acceptable reasons are “ill” and “hungover” because we don´t actually know each other well enough to tell the truth. Not being ignored can be incredibly stressful, and I feel like a mutant for perceiving it so. I can already hear the admonishments in my head.

These admonishments largely deal with the idea that I need to do anything about this. I cannot just have a negative attitude towards social interactions. It´s mean towards others, and I, too, am missing out on so much great stuff, I just don´t know it yet. The voices don´t sound cruel, they sound like someone who despite having the most benevolent intentions genuinely can´t understand me, but that is precisely what makes them cruel. The complete lack of understanding. I am a conundrum. My feelings are beyond comprehension.

But do I understand myself any better?

I don´t know why the way other people approach me feels intrusive rather than kind to me. I´m tired of blaming myself for this, and I´m equally tired of blaming others. Both approaches suggest there is a solution, that spontaneously connecting with a wide range of people is possible for me. And yet I´m not even interested in advice or solutions. When I don´t feel connected to others, then why exactly would I want to train how to make friends with them? That seems awfully stressful to me. It´s like lying once to get yourself out of trouble, and then having to lie again in order to keep up appearances, and in the end you have all kinds of obligations and social duties which you´d have never signed up for if you´d had the choice. I´m not going to learn how to win the favour of people I don´t really want to befriend. That would actually be highly unfair towards them.

I don´t want to learn how to fit in better with a world I feel alienated from. I want to walk into a place and fit in just the way I am. Nerds are the best fit I´ve found so far, even though we have different interests, but this is not quite what I´m looking for. I´m not so much looking for individual friendship opportunities (I´m happy enough with the ones I have and I don´t think I could juggle any more personal relationships anyway) as I am looking for a world in which I don´t feel like a stranger. I guess that one would be called Utopia.