two magnets, repulsed
I don’t know how one is supposed to completely overcome being isolated and rather alone for most of their life, but I try.
There’s disconnection within the conversation due to a lack of social skills and/or autism. Then there’s lack of social experience and a lack of a big-enough social battery making it energy draining and something scary and unknown that can’t be predicted; you never know what happens next, and it stresses you out. There might be social anxiety because of all of this.
Loneliness seems to repel people and they can suss it out in you, like a scent stuck to you, and that makes it worse. You enter every interaction trying to mask the scent of loneliness and perform perfectly, but it sucks the life out of you and isn’t convincing either. You’re plain, boring like this, and there’s not even something in it for you if you can’t be yourself, you’re just acting and can’t talk or hang like you want to. But experience has taught you that if you’re yourself, you’re cringe, too loud, too weird, or can’t keep up the convo. It’s a cycle.
You feel weird about being such a loner, so you join clubs and groups and chats and servers. Arriving there, you feel weird about being such a loner because watching the group rubs it in that you don’t belong and don’t have such a group in your life and not the ease of integrating into one almost instantly. Everyone is friendly and close to each other, and it seems impossible or a feat of years to reach the same level of closeness to them, to penetrate that invisible wall. It seems hopeless. You don’t know how to get a word in, how to participate in the convo without awkward pauses, having to repeat yourself or killing the group chat, or without being vulnerable in ways you aren’t comfortable with. So you withdraw, you leave. And now you feel weird for having left a group and secluded yourself again.
Oh, I could write books about that. I especially remember me trying to add lots of people on social media to talk to as a teen before realizing how unrealistic it was and deleting them again; I remember joining Discord servers just to leave again, and how I booked classes like wreath-making and painting classes in the hopes of finding friends, just to be too focused on the craft to talk to anyone while everyone else socialized.
And I see it in the wild too. I see people come and go within groups, always dropping off soon after joining or within each depressive episode when they think everyone hates them. I see them “rebrand” every other week because they become sick of themselves and want a clean canvas and hopefully be their better or perfect self now that is likable and can do all these things they couldn’t so far.
I have been all these things too, and still struggle with some of them. All that helped me so far is being put in situations, exposure therapy I guess, and aging. Doing it while scared. Gaining experience by being someone’s girlfriend that has friends. Giving less of a fuck what others think; ironically, that made more approachable and likable than overthinking and holding back and feeling embarrassed about myself, like I used to. Staying in the group chats and servers regardless, even if I have to take a break in actively reading or participating. Settling for not being someone’s best friend. Stopping the thought spirals that make me want to purge my accounts and my friend lists.
Staying away from people who are too severe in their dysfunction also unfortunately helps - I need to learn the social skills and processes from well adjusted people and need to build my trust with them, not be at the mercy of someone’s mental state that will always make them flee, delete, unfriend and ghost periodically… when you do that, you are your own worst enemy and biggest roadblock, and I can’t bear to see my own past behavior reflected back to me like that if I want to grow.
I learned that when you let that side win, people aren’t relieved to see you go (unless it’s the 20th time), they are concerned, sad, and wonder what they did wrong to make you do that. Some might think it was because you hate them, some think it’s because of arrogance and egoism. If you always give in to the urge to leave, you’ll never learn to sit with discomfort. Not everything about socializing is comfortable.
Honestly, a lot still isn’t for me. Sometimes, it all seems like work with no payoff, but then I remember the good times when it feels effortless and secure because I was willing to put in the work and stay and endure awkwardness and tension and guilt and arguments.
It’s still confusing. Every couple weeks I forget people genuinely like me.