Some stuff
I was just listening to a podcast about the recent anime WataMote and how there have been highly contrasting opinions about it; everything ranging from "the most hilarious shit ever" to "the cruelest anime ever". I only watched one episode of it because the main character's condition was too close to my own experiences in ways that I didn't find funny, but painful. While I was writing a comment to said podcast I realized I was drifting into too personal territory -so much that I started crying while writing- that had nothing to do in a public forum. I still wanted to put those feelings out and maybe get some catharsis from putting them into words.
So basically this post will consist of a lot of rambling and depression and no one really needs to read it. I just need to write it down somewhere.
I haven't watched WataMote. I probably never will. I watched just one episode, and the way I could relate to Tomoko was not fun or entertaining, it made me awfully self-aware of my own crippling social awkwardness -which I just er recently started getting over, and I'm not even halfway there-.Ever since I was little I've had this terrible social anxiety and fear of ridicule. I have a very vivid memory of myself being dragged by my father to some politic convention when I was 3-4 and spending hours circling around the place, hoping for any of the other kids there to invite me to play, too scared to ask myself and getting rejected.
To say it is hell to live with this kind of absolute terror of ridicule and rejection would be sort of an understatement. I live with a sort of paranoia that makes me worry about what people think about me all the time. Even when I'm with my family, I'm always wondering if they won't think I'm stupid for something I say. Heck, until maybe two or three years ago, I wasn't able to ask for directions or order a pizza because I had this subconscious terror of being judged and laughed at by strangers, and while I'm mostly over that I still try to avoid interaction with strangers when possible. The downfall of all of this is that I'm in my twenties already, almost finishing up my career and with no more than two or three people to consider "close friends" and a bunch of casual acquaintances. Although I wouldn't say I'm unhappy or miserable, I do believe that I'm missing out on an important part of my life, and that I'm not enjoying life the way most other people do.
Which leads me to the next point. A passing comment in the podcast was about Tomoko's relationship with her brother. One of the guests said they thought this relationship was very accurately portrayed in how it shows a socially crippled older sister who envies her socially successful younger brother. This struck a very painful chord in me, because my relationship with my younger sister is not that different to that. We don't have a terrible relationship per sé, but until a very short time ago, we spent a substantial amount of time fighting and screaming at each other over the pettiest things. One of the reasons I got so angry at her (and still do sometimes) is that it frustrates me to watch her glide through life with the bare minimum effort and enjoying the heck out of it whence I was brainwashed with the "study to be successful" and "follow the rules and stick to social standard morality" shit that kept me glued to books and libraries through half of my life until I found myself an adult and with little to no particularly memorable "youth memories" (having a stupid high school romance or doing stupid fun things with friends, whatever). One of the things she used to scream at me when we got into big fights was "Well, at least I'm living my life unlike you who has zero friends whatsoever" which always got me to cry and her to pick on me because of it. I feel like I was fooled by society into thinking that prioritizing my studies was the way to assure my future and being happy, yet somehow I watch my sister hang out with her friends -she has tons of them- all the time, barely ever working or studying and somehow always achieving what she wants while having a blast at it. I never get invited to college parties -I don't even know who makes them-, I've never been confessed to buy a guy, and the one dude I did confess to was like "Uhh... oh I never noticed. Bye". As I notice the years go by I just start getting more and more scared and anxious thinking that I'll just end up alone and bitter, feeling like my life is just passing me by without me actually getting anything from it.
ANd you know? I really wish I could be different. I seriously believe if I could go back, I'd do it all differently from scratch. But as I think that, I also know that, as much as I've told myself to "start being different", I simply can't. I have no clue of how to approach people, and I'm so terrifyingly scared of being laughed at or hated for something I say, something I wear or the stupid pimples on my face, that I just can't bring myself to do it. I can't even talk about these feelings with any real person because I fear their judgment.
Of course, I'm bypassing a lot of things, mostly, that I was forced to grow up early because, when my parents separated, I was 8 whilst my sister was 2, my mom was very angry and unstable, my father was drowning in alcohol 24/7 and my family went from well-established middle class to borderline poverty in a fortnight. Or how I had to be mom's support many times when the economy was terrible, when she couldn't find a job, when the only job she found was horrible and had miserable pay, when money was barely enough to survive the month, when I couldn't hang out after school because I was the only person available to pick up my sister, when mom got depressed and started rambling about how her life had been a failure and how tired she was of living miserably -which added to my consuming fear of losing my mom at an early age, like she did-, when my sister got through her angry-rebellious stage of never having money for anything and took it all out on mom, etc. etc. I'm bypassing it because my social cripple existed long before that, and I think my memory of that political convention testifies that, but of course, it all contributed to my holing-up and incapacity to form real bonds with anyone or becoming too anxious about money to ever dare spend an extra dime on unnecessary stuff.
I don't want to keep ranting forever -I'm PMSing so I'm especially emotional these days-. All I'll add is that the one episode in WataMote had this scene of Tomoko wanting to get a date for the Fireworks festival so she stays behind in the library to see if someone is dateless too, hoping they would invite her. She sits there for hours staring at some dude, hoping he'll invite her to the fireworks, until he finally leaves without ever acknowledging she was even there. The way I connected to that feeling of waiting and waiting for someone to talk to you because you just can't -and it doesn't make sense, there's no reason, you simply can't- convinced me that I was not fit to like the series and abandoned it on the spot. I've been rumagging on those feelings since then and hearing the podcast brought them all back out so I felt the need to take out all these feelings
So basically this post will consist of a lot of rambling and depression and no one really needs to read it. I just need to write it down somewhere.
I haven't watched WataMote. I probably never will. I watched just one episode, and the way I could relate to Tomoko was not fun or entertaining, it made me awfully self-aware of my own crippling social awkwardness -which I just er recently started getting over, and I'm not even halfway there-.Ever since I was little I've had this terrible social anxiety and fear of ridicule. I have a very vivid memory of myself being dragged by my father to some politic convention when I was 3-4 and spending hours circling around the place, hoping for any of the other kids there to invite me to play, too scared to ask myself and getting rejected.
To say it is hell to live with this kind of absolute terror of ridicule and rejection would be sort of an understatement. I live with a sort of paranoia that makes me worry about what people think about me all the time. Even when I'm with my family, I'm always wondering if they won't think I'm stupid for something I say. Heck, until maybe two or three years ago, I wasn't able to ask for directions or order a pizza because I had this subconscious terror of being judged and laughed at by strangers, and while I'm mostly over that I still try to avoid interaction with strangers when possible. The downfall of all of this is that I'm in my twenties already, almost finishing up my career and with no more than two or three people to consider "close friends" and a bunch of casual acquaintances. Although I wouldn't say I'm unhappy or miserable, I do believe that I'm missing out on an important part of my life, and that I'm not enjoying life the way most other people do.
Which leads me to the next point. A passing comment in the podcast was about Tomoko's relationship with her brother. One of the guests said they thought this relationship was very accurately portrayed in how it shows a socially crippled older sister who envies her socially successful younger brother. This struck a very painful chord in me, because my relationship with my younger sister is not that different to that. We don't have a terrible relationship per sé, but until a very short time ago, we spent a substantial amount of time fighting and screaming at each other over the pettiest things. One of the reasons I got so angry at her (and still do sometimes) is that it frustrates me to watch her glide through life with the bare minimum effort and enjoying the heck out of it whence I was brainwashed with the "study to be successful" and "follow the rules and stick to social standard morality" shit that kept me glued to books and libraries through half of my life until I found myself an adult and with little to no particularly memorable "youth memories" (having a stupid high school romance or doing stupid fun things with friends, whatever). One of the things she used to scream at me when we got into big fights was "Well, at least I'm living my life unlike you who has zero friends whatsoever" which always got me to cry and her to pick on me because of it. I feel like I was fooled by society into thinking that prioritizing my studies was the way to assure my future and being happy, yet somehow I watch my sister hang out with her friends -she has tons of them- all the time, barely ever working or studying and somehow always achieving what she wants while having a blast at it. I never get invited to college parties -I don't even know who makes them-, I've never been confessed to buy a guy, and the one dude I did confess to was like "Uhh... oh I never noticed. Bye". As I notice the years go by I just start getting more and more scared and anxious thinking that I'll just end up alone and bitter, feeling like my life is just passing me by without me actually getting anything from it.
ANd you know? I really wish I could be different. I seriously believe if I could go back, I'd do it all differently from scratch. But as I think that, I also know that, as much as I've told myself to "start being different", I simply can't. I have no clue of how to approach people, and I'm so terrifyingly scared of being laughed at or hated for something I say, something I wear or the stupid pimples on my face, that I just can't bring myself to do it. I can't even talk about these feelings with any real person because I fear their judgment.
Of course, I'm bypassing a lot of things, mostly, that I was forced to grow up early because, when my parents separated, I was 8 whilst my sister was 2, my mom was very angry and unstable, my father was drowning in alcohol 24/7 and my family went from well-established middle class to borderline poverty in a fortnight. Or how I had to be mom's support many times when the economy was terrible, when she couldn't find a job, when the only job she found was horrible and had miserable pay, when money was barely enough to survive the month, when I couldn't hang out after school because I was the only person available to pick up my sister, when mom got depressed and started rambling about how her life had been a failure and how tired she was of living miserably -which added to my consuming fear of losing my mom at an early age, like she did-, when my sister got through her angry-rebellious stage of never having money for anything and took it all out on mom, etc. etc. I'm bypassing it because my social cripple existed long before that, and I think my memory of that political convention testifies that, but of course, it all contributed to my holing-up and incapacity to form real bonds with anyone or becoming too anxious about money to ever dare spend an extra dime on unnecessary stuff.
I don't want to keep ranting forever -I'm PMSing so I'm especially emotional these days-. All I'll add is that the one episode in WataMote had this scene of Tomoko wanting to get a date for the Fireworks festival so she stays behind in the library to see if someone is dateless too, hoping they would invite her. She sits there for hours staring at some dude, hoping he'll invite her to the fireworks, until he finally leaves without ever acknowledging she was even there. The way I connected to that feeling of waiting and waiting for someone to talk to you because you just can't -and it doesn't make sense, there's no reason, you simply can't- convinced me that I was not fit to like the series and abandoned it on the spot. I've been rumagging on those feelings since then and hearing the podcast brought them all back out so I felt the need to take out all these feelings