(no subject)
It's weird to think that I've probably socialised - and by socialising I of course mean 'socialising online' - more tonight than I have at any point in the last, what four years? Four years, maybe.
It's not like I've said - or typed, rather - a lot, but then, I didn't need to in order to pass my usual conversational standard. Inept as always I've exchanged a few comments with a few people via Twitter, conversations sliced and diced into 140 character fragments and sent out into the ether to be read by whoever chooses to do so. Like instant messaging, but slower.
Messaging, then.
I'm rubbish at it, and I don't know what to say or do. Mostly my Twitter account is not used to converse with other Twitterers, but to record and distribute thought and things that catch my fancy - just like my journals used to do, when I kept them and kept them up to date. Capturing a mood here, a joke there. I enjoyed this, I disliked that, and unlike normal people I just can't keep it to myself. Even if my posts or tweets are really only valuable to myself I still like to share the wealth, or lack thereof.
When people enter into the equation, when nameless, faceless readers become participants it becomes a different matter. Recording thoughts and feelings isn't frightening, although it often carries some measure of embarrassment that sometimes compels me to delete posts, tweets, status updates for fear of what others might think of me should they happen across them. I suppose there is a slight measure of fear alongside that embarrassment, now I come to think of it, but it's the embarrassment that takes precedence. I'm so fucking embarrassed by myself. As mentioned many times before reading my own writings is a constant source of hilarity, yes, but also a major source of embarrassment. If I'd ever thought to count them - and why would I - I'd have lost count of the amount of deletions and edits I've made to my own 'work', even going so far as to erase or correct old DeadJournal posts from seven years ago just because a large and vocal part of me cringes when I reread them so many years down the line.
A big problem with expressing thoughts these days - especially doing so on Facebook - is that I've actually met most of these people. Unlike the two friends I've dragged into my contemporary confidence from my DeadJournal days these are not Internet acquaintances, these are not Internet 'friends'. They're flesh and blood people I've met up close and personal, timorously shaking the odd hand, exchanging the odd geegaw. Two or three of them have even hugged me, for heaven's sake. Granted, their arms probably fell off due to some virulent strain of leprosy soon after, but hey, that's what you get for hugging me. As real actual live honest-to-God people I can't talk about the things I'd prefer to talk about in front of them, because the things I say matter in a way just about everything I've ever said or done does not. They can pull me up on things I've said at a later date, or file them away in their internal annotated folder where they store mental pictures of their friend/cousin/sister/daughter and her hopeless husband-to-be. It's actually kind of difficult to show as much restraint as I try to, because when I'm talking to myself I'm actually a pretty unrestrained no-holds-barred kind of a guy. Brutally honest, for all that. Mean, even. Pretty damned horrible.
The kicker is that as much as I've always said I've never learned any social niceties due to, well, missing social interaction altogether for the longest time, now I'm having to play catch-up and learn how to be nice and respectful and not shout out my usual brand of self-effacing inanities. Turns out self-effacing inanities don't cut it out in the real world, where the real people are.
Interacting with people who have no such problem, who've already been and done the social thing and know where all the boundaries are is a problem, not just because they could take offence at something I say but also because they could easily offend me with the most innocuous quirk of normal human behaviour. While I was in isolation I drew up my own boundaries and codes, and the rest of the world don't actually play by my rulebook. So someone could say or do something that upsets me and they won't realise it, because what kind of person would take offence at such a thing? A CRAZY person, that's who.
It's difficult. I'm working on it.
But I still find it terribly hard to socialise at even the most basic of levels. I don't know how to address people or what to say once I have their attention, so I tend not to. In Jersey Lindsay becomes both my conversational proxy and a shield to hid behind once the small talk starts flying. Believe it or not it took until yesterday for me to realise that when Lindsay tells me her flatmate Helen can hear me, Helen can ALSO hear me making strangled panicky noises at the back of my throat. I've been soundless and invisible for so long. those things don't usually occur to me. Out of sight, out of mind. Out of MY mind.
It took immense effort to laugh off Helen throwing sea-sodden sand at me at the beach, effort so immense in fact that I couldn't quite get to the laugh and instead ended up with a fixed half-smirk of disbelief hewn into my face. Surely more sturdy than the sand-carving she'd left down by the shoreline, never washed away by the rising tide it lingers somewhere inside me like a tribute to despair in the face of social awkwardness. Helen being Helen, a friendly sort who gathers friends like medieval taxmen took in tithes, a little thrown sand is par for the course. Thinking back, I'm just glad it was only sand. If it had been something slightly messier I don't know if I'd have ever been able to be in her company again.
It's a normal thing, playing at the beach, down in the sand, building sandcastles and friendships and all that jazz. But like so much actual jazz the beat sounds erratic to me, the chords discordant, and the melody a shrieking sax-whine that can't be hummed or memorised because jazz and friendships are unpredictable, unplanned and improvised. I don't feel comfortable with either. I like the familiar old melodies I hear in my head. I like to know what people are thinking. I like to know what they're thinking about me.
Once upon a time, when I spent far too much time communicating with people online, I didn't really care what they thought because, well, mostly because I assumed they weren't actually real, but also because the communities I was a part of were communities I'd had a hand in building, communities of which I was almost a keystone. These days I have no community I can call my own. I just have my Twitter, my thought distribution system. Sometimes people message me, but usually it's regarding this game or that movie, and I can just about handle that, so long as I agree with their opinions on the matter at hand and they agree with mine. If there's some disparity between our opinions then things can get . . . difficult. I take arguments to heart, especially when they usually end up with people deliberately misinterpreting what I'm saying and - worst of all, worst of the utmost worst - they end up laughing at me. Because these interactions are of no consequence to them. Why should they be? Would that I could do the same, but whenever I see those revolting smiley faces laughing at me all I hear is the echo, the echo of cruel laughter that's followed me all my life and continues to discount my opinions like they're worthless, like I'm worthless, like nothing I could ever say or do could ever matter.
And I suppose that's a fair assessment of me. I suppose that's both truthful and fair. But damn, if it doesn't feel like the opposite . . .
I can't truthfully say that I've never felt as isolated as I do right now, because I've felt isolated for so much of my life I find it difficult to recall a time when I didn't. It worries me, this perma-state of isolation. Not so much the physical sensation, the sense of dislocation where I'm so many miles away from someone I love and her personal support troupe who at least try to tolerate me, if only for her sake. It's the sense of isolation inside that bothers me, the constant loneliness some existential wags have seen fit to name 'The Human Condition'. Much as I once worried that I might never be able to truly feel happiness, now I worry that I might be mentally unable to feel loved. This worries me far more than my state of happiness, because nothing's riding on my happiness; my happiness is, in effect, completely inconsequential. The world won't cherish or revile me any less if I'm a happy chappie. But being able to feel loved . . . when you're planning on starting a family, and living inside that family as a part of a larget unit, a larger support network that belongs entirely to someone else. If you can't feel like you belong that you're not just hurting yourself deep down inside where nobody can see. I have horrid, vivid images of my possible future children asking their mother just what's wrong with dad. Their well-being is riding on this. Hypothetical as they might be. Also, the people around me. I can't become a cancer on Lindsay's extended family. I can't be a black polyp, a stranger in their midst, an alien invader who tries to walk and talk but falls and fails. Perhaps I've been watching too much Dexter, but his unwitting struggle for acceptance while still considering himself the proverbial Other doesn't so much seem like something resonant as something to aspire to. In other words, this fictional serial killer seems to be doing a hell of a lot better at life than I am. I bet he doesn't feel the need to write a megalength essay after he tweets to a couple of Internet nerds.
This is the first time I've sat and written - actually written - something for a very long time. Maybe I should get back into the habit of it, now I've scared and driven away anyone would bother to read it. After all, those one-hundred-and-forty characters are rather restrictive for a verbose sum'bitch like me. How can anyone be expected to explore the dark teatime of their soul with the fail whale hanging over them?
Some people say they wish they could make friends easily. I can understand that. But man, if I was at that point I'd consider myself lucky.
Or maybe not myself, because I am pretty lucky, given the people I know, the support I have. Maybe if I was at that point I'd consider everyone else lucky. Lucky not to put up to with me, the guy I am at this moment at time.
Because really, who'd want to get to know me? I wish I didn't.
It's not like I've said - or typed, rather - a lot, but then, I didn't need to in order to pass my usual conversational standard. Inept as always I've exchanged a few comments with a few people via Twitter, conversations sliced and diced into 140 character fragments and sent out into the ether to be read by whoever chooses to do so. Like instant messaging, but slower.
Messaging, then.
I'm rubbish at it, and I don't know what to say or do. Mostly my Twitter account is not used to converse with other Twitterers, but to record and distribute thought and things that catch my fancy - just like my journals used to do, when I kept them and kept them up to date. Capturing a mood here, a joke there. I enjoyed this, I disliked that, and unlike normal people I just can't keep it to myself. Even if my posts or tweets are really only valuable to myself I still like to share the wealth, or lack thereof.
When people enter into the equation, when nameless, faceless readers become participants it becomes a different matter. Recording thoughts and feelings isn't frightening, although it often carries some measure of embarrassment that sometimes compels me to delete posts, tweets, status updates for fear of what others might think of me should they happen across them. I suppose there is a slight measure of fear alongside that embarrassment, now I come to think of it, but it's the embarrassment that takes precedence. I'm so fucking embarrassed by myself. As mentioned many times before reading my own writings is a constant source of hilarity, yes, but also a major source of embarrassment. If I'd ever thought to count them - and why would I - I'd have lost count of the amount of deletions and edits I've made to my own 'work', even going so far as to erase or correct old DeadJournal posts from seven years ago just because a large and vocal part of me cringes when I reread them so many years down the line.
A big problem with expressing thoughts these days - especially doing so on Facebook - is that I've actually met most of these people. Unlike the two friends I've dragged into my contemporary confidence from my DeadJournal days these are not Internet acquaintances, these are not Internet 'friends'. They're flesh and blood people I've met up close and personal, timorously shaking the odd hand, exchanging the odd geegaw. Two or three of them have even hugged me, for heaven's sake. Granted, their arms probably fell off due to some virulent strain of leprosy soon after, but hey, that's what you get for hugging me. As real actual live honest-to-God people I can't talk about the things I'd prefer to talk about in front of them, because the things I say matter in a way just about everything I've ever said or done does not. They can pull me up on things I've said at a later date, or file them away in their internal annotated folder where they store mental pictures of their friend/cousin/sister/daughter and her hopeless husband-to-be. It's actually kind of difficult to show as much restraint as I try to, because when I'm talking to myself I'm actually a pretty unrestrained no-holds-barred kind of a guy. Brutally honest, for all that. Mean, even. Pretty damned horrible.
The kicker is that as much as I've always said I've never learned any social niceties due to, well, missing social interaction altogether for the longest time, now I'm having to play catch-up and learn how to be nice and respectful and not shout out my usual brand of self-effacing inanities. Turns out self-effacing inanities don't cut it out in the real world, where the real people are.
Interacting with people who have no such problem, who've already been and done the social thing and know where all the boundaries are is a problem, not just because they could take offence at something I say but also because they could easily offend me with the most innocuous quirk of normal human behaviour. While I was in isolation I drew up my own boundaries and codes, and the rest of the world don't actually play by my rulebook. So someone could say or do something that upsets me and they won't realise it, because what kind of person would take offence at such a thing? A CRAZY person, that's who.
It's difficult. I'm working on it.
But I still find it terribly hard to socialise at even the most basic of levels. I don't know how to address people or what to say once I have their attention, so I tend not to. In Jersey Lindsay becomes both my conversational proxy and a shield to hid behind once the small talk starts flying. Believe it or not it took until yesterday for me to realise that when Lindsay tells me her flatmate Helen can hear me, Helen can ALSO hear me making strangled panicky noises at the back of my throat. I've been soundless and invisible for so long. those things don't usually occur to me. Out of sight, out of mind. Out of MY mind.
It took immense effort to laugh off Helen throwing sea-sodden sand at me at the beach, effort so immense in fact that I couldn't quite get to the laugh and instead ended up with a fixed half-smirk of disbelief hewn into my face. Surely more sturdy than the sand-carving she'd left down by the shoreline, never washed away by the rising tide it lingers somewhere inside me like a tribute to despair in the face of social awkwardness. Helen being Helen, a friendly sort who gathers friends like medieval taxmen took in tithes, a little thrown sand is par for the course. Thinking back, I'm just glad it was only sand. If it had been something slightly messier I don't know if I'd have ever been able to be in her company again.
It's a normal thing, playing at the beach, down in the sand, building sandcastles and friendships and all that jazz. But like so much actual jazz the beat sounds erratic to me, the chords discordant, and the melody a shrieking sax-whine that can't be hummed or memorised because jazz and friendships are unpredictable, unplanned and improvised. I don't feel comfortable with either. I like the familiar old melodies I hear in my head. I like to know what people are thinking. I like to know what they're thinking about me.
Once upon a time, when I spent far too much time communicating with people online, I didn't really care what they thought because, well, mostly because I assumed they weren't actually real, but also because the communities I was a part of were communities I'd had a hand in building, communities of which I was almost a keystone. These days I have no community I can call my own. I just have my Twitter, my thought distribution system. Sometimes people message me, but usually it's regarding this game or that movie, and I can just about handle that, so long as I agree with their opinions on the matter at hand and they agree with mine. If there's some disparity between our opinions then things can get . . . difficult. I take arguments to heart, especially when they usually end up with people deliberately misinterpreting what I'm saying and - worst of all, worst of the utmost worst - they end up laughing at me. Because these interactions are of no consequence to them. Why should they be? Would that I could do the same, but whenever I see those revolting smiley faces laughing at me all I hear is the echo, the echo of cruel laughter that's followed me all my life and continues to discount my opinions like they're worthless, like I'm worthless, like nothing I could ever say or do could ever matter.
And I suppose that's a fair assessment of me. I suppose that's both truthful and fair. But damn, if it doesn't feel like the opposite . . .
I can't truthfully say that I've never felt as isolated as I do right now, because I've felt isolated for so much of my life I find it difficult to recall a time when I didn't. It worries me, this perma-state of isolation. Not so much the physical sensation, the sense of dislocation where I'm so many miles away from someone I love and her personal support troupe who at least try to tolerate me, if only for her sake. It's the sense of isolation inside that bothers me, the constant loneliness some existential wags have seen fit to name 'The Human Condition'. Much as I once worried that I might never be able to truly feel happiness, now I worry that I might be mentally unable to feel loved. This worries me far more than my state of happiness, because nothing's riding on my happiness; my happiness is, in effect, completely inconsequential. The world won't cherish or revile me any less if I'm a happy chappie. But being able to feel loved . . . when you're planning on starting a family, and living inside that family as a part of a larget unit, a larger support network that belongs entirely to someone else. If you can't feel like you belong that you're not just hurting yourself deep down inside where nobody can see. I have horrid, vivid images of my possible future children asking their mother just what's wrong with dad. Their well-being is riding on this. Hypothetical as they might be. Also, the people around me. I can't become a cancer on Lindsay's extended family. I can't be a black polyp, a stranger in their midst, an alien invader who tries to walk and talk but falls and fails. Perhaps I've been watching too much Dexter, but his unwitting struggle for acceptance while still considering himself the proverbial Other doesn't so much seem like something resonant as something to aspire to. In other words, this fictional serial killer seems to be doing a hell of a lot better at life than I am. I bet he doesn't feel the need to write a megalength essay after he tweets to a couple of Internet nerds.
This is the first time I've sat and written - actually written - something for a very long time. Maybe I should get back into the habit of it, now I've scared and driven away anyone would bother to read it. After all, those one-hundred-and-forty characters are rather restrictive for a verbose sum'bitch like me. How can anyone be expected to explore the dark teatime of their soul with the fail whale hanging over them?
Some people say they wish they could make friends easily. I can understand that. But man, if I was at that point I'd consider myself lucky.
Or maybe not myself, because I am pretty lucky, given the people I know, the support I have. Maybe if I was at that point I'd consider everyone else lucky. Lucky not to put up to with me, the guy I am at this moment at time.
Because really, who'd want to get to know me? I wish I didn't.