I have bad luck at restaurants. Order wrong, hair in food, obnoxious guest sitting next to me, ordered and paid and totally forgotten about, waitress quit her job while I was waiting on her to bring food, ordered a cheeseburger at a drive thru and got home and there was no burger patty on it, hibachi restaurant hostess didn’t turn the grill on for the chef and had to wait 30mins for it to warm up. I’m polite. It’s not me.
this post was submitted on 14 Jul 2023
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I constantly feel lonely, but too socially anxious to go out and try to socialize. Keeping existing friendships alive or forming new ones is also something I struggle with.
Socializing ain't worth it anyway. Lot of work for absolutely no result. I guess thats my curse.
Luckily I'm good at self-entertainment. I thrive in solitariness. Introvert to my bones. Still, would have been nice to have someone to be alone together with sometimes.
I don't mind being alone for the most part, I have a lot of things I want to do and those activities are (mostly) solitary. Still, there are certain things that I crave others for. I want to go out, to concerts, party, travel, have a good time, and I want to do that with others. I feel like I used to handle loneliness in a better way, but now I'm just feeling depressed and slightly suicidal over it. And I don't know how to fix it...
Traveling alone, with only last-minute planning, is great though. Eating at restaurants alone in a different country without having to wait for someone, or visit parks without having to follow someone.
And depression can be medicated. And I refuse to let my own happiness be dependent upon someone else, I once decided. Other than that, I got no idea how to fix it either. Would love to be able to see myself as others see me so that I can correct whatever I'm doing wrong.
I've just barely gotten over my agoraphobia to get a shit min wage job, so traveling will be out of the questions for a while. Even if I had the money, I can't see myself enjoying going somewhere by myself. I'd be scared of getting robbed and raped on top of being terrified of going outside and dealing with people. I just don't want to do things by myself anymore.
Eh, medication won't remove the depression, mostly it just levels off your mood. Sure, you won't feel so sad anymore, but you won't feel the high highs either. I don't think being lonely and missing having people to share your life with makes you dependent on other people, we're social animals after all and we all have a need for socialization, attention, intimacy, etc. Those are basic needs, just like hydration and sleep.
Huh. Got agoraphobia myself. It manifest in crowds. Public transport, noisy environments, parties, crowded streets, that kinda thing. No fear of outside nor dealing with people one person at a time, so I can't relate to yours. Thought it was social anxiety at first until I went to a psychiatrist for my depression. My first trip completely alone, 8 years ago, on interrail, left me so stressed that I had to stay in Copenhagen for two extra days just calming down. Took me 7 days down to Venice, then I managed to race home to Oslo again in only 24 hours. Still worth it. Its the start thats the hardest. I just had to jump into it. Nowadays I've afforded myself a cheap car. Felt stuck here in the city without it, the anxiety got worse and I just couldnt handle busses anymore (and just barely trains) so I never went anywhere. With a car my two last solitary summer vacations has been a lot more comfortable.
Sure, you won’t feel so sad anymore, but you won’t feel the high highs either.
Meh. Worth it. Because I was seriously down. Not suicidal, but 3 years ago I spent the 4 weeks of summer vacation just lying in bed, sleeping, eating, staring at the ceiling, nothing else. I dont think I would have cared if I died there. I did self-medicinate on modafinil for a while before that. That gave me the highs back too. But its not legal here and damn hard to import, so anti-depressants it is. And trying to exercise the depression away. Which is going meh, but a lot easier than before.
Those are basic needs
I believe the need to feel useful is a more basic need than socialization. But thats how I'm wired. Which may explain why I'm so bad at learning this social stuff.
shit min wage job
This is a killer. Jeez, having sucky minimum wages literally kills people by stressing them to depression and early death. We aint made for that. Shouldnt be legal.
I do fine nowdays in terms of going outside. I don't like it, and when I don't have to I won't, but I've also tried going out, like attending work events, last time a massive party. It wasn't the worst, but they didn't have the alcohol I drink and it just ended up being kinda boring. I didn't really meet anyone new, or do anything interesting. Public transport is no longer an issue for me, I'm anxious about it, but I've managed to get to where I want and back just fine, and every successful trip (even if the train is full and I don't get an ideal seat) is another small confidence boost.
For some anti-depressants work, for me it's a no. To add to what I mentioned earlier, I'm also an overdose risk, so I try to have the least amount of medication around me. I'd need to have someone who'd keep my meds locked away from me and supervise me taking them in order for me to feel safe, and well, don't have anyone like that. As of late, my depressive periods are not that common or long anymore either, but they are brutal. I go from feeling normal to thinking about killing myself (not actively planning or trying tho) in a matter of hours, and a few days or hours later I'm back to normal.
I'd say the feel to need useful is just the need for acceptance. I saw a post few days ago, a screenshot from tumblr, about how some people make themselves as low maintenance as possible, due to trauma. Underneath that, another tumblr user wrote: "You don't believe you can be liked so you settle for being useful." You, or anyone else reading this, deserve to be loved and cared for, even if you aren't "useful." We all bring provide something to this world with our unique experiences, thoughts, and ideas.
Luckily my job is fairly stress free (other than being pissed about my coworkers not cleaning after themselves and my need to work hard to try and gain acceptance) and I only work 3 days a week. Plus I get to eat a lot of chocolate. :P But on the other hand it isn't enough money to live off of, and my skills are wasted. I am now stressing over my job because I have a mystery illness and I'm unsure if I can keep working there anymore. I don't know what other job I could do. I was for years without income and if it wasn't for the kindness of others, I would have been in debt and homeless. I'm scared that will become reality again. I just fail to see why, or how, I'm supposed to keep going when there just doesn't seem to be a future. Even if I found a job, it would need to pay a lot in order for me to get my own apartment, even a small one. I feel like my only way of finding a place to live is to find a sugar daddy or a well earning man willing to marry me, but I don't want to be a gold digger. Or have a relationship based on the need for shelter.
how some people make themselves as low maintenance as possible
Oh. Guilty. Big time.
For me it's not so much the solitude I enjoy. Many people seem to feel like being alone is the worst thing and being with anyone else is better than that. I feel like there are many people who being with is worse than being alone. I enjoy my own company. That's the bar one needs to reach for me to want to hang with them.
Dice hate me. It doesn't matter the context, if I need to roll, it's gonna go poorly for me.
I have near perfect timing.
I can set a ten minute timer, walk away, and then wander back into the room ten seconds before the beep.
I can go to sleep without an alarm set and wake up at 4am if I need to.
Everyone around me is late. All. The. Time.
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I have extremely specific interests which makes me quite difficult to please. I usually can't say I like some certain subject because I like a specific sub-category of that subject and the rest doesn't interest me at all even though to an outsider they may seem like the same thing.
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I over-think and over-analyze everything. I assume most things people say and do have some deep meaning which I'm always trying to figure out. I'm kind of subconscioussly assuming every comment others makes is the end result of a long chain of logic and reasoning.
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It's almost impossible for me to get upset about stuff in the media for example and thus people may often assume I'm for something only because I'm not violently against it. I feel like I have quite strong sense of empathy and I can view many things from both sides and I find a ton of nuance in everything. Things that are simple to others are very complex to me.
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I have bit of a superiority complex. The thing just is that I don't consider myself to be especially intelligent - just that many others seem to be way below the treshold I'm expecting from an average person. I have almost no tolerance for people who seem uncapable of generating independent thoughts. If your opinions are consistently predictable then I lose respect for you.
I was fully prepared to make my own top level comment, but I see someone already said exactly everything I was thinking.
Do you also sometimes feel like the real world is just a bit too real? Like you can't find anything special or magical about the world? I feel that is a curse, too, when I see so many people who see something about life and the world I just don't see.
I'm not sure I agree with that. I'm definitely capable of feeling awe. I love vast landscapes, big trees, staring at ants, excavators, passing highway traffic, flow of water, campfire, night sky etc. Those things seem quite "magical" for me.
I love making art, but only have small bursts of motivation to make anything.
I have an extremely sensitive nose. It really has no positive sides apart from maybe mildly impressing someone for a brief moment.
If you've ever seen that episode of SpongeBob where Patrick gets a nose, then that pretty much sums it up.
Pedantry
I’ve almost been abducted by too many people that made it to the news for murder or rape.
Pro tip: don’t accept rides or help from strangers.
If anyone is throwing or rolling a ball (not at me or to me) it will hit me.
Also I seem doomed to never find a good apricot but I don't think that's just me.
ETA I am also remarkably unlucky at raffles. Work holiday party does these and they are generous, chance about 50/50. Eleven years now, I have struck out.
All of my animals end up having weird special needs or differing medical issues.
I'm not. I'm a eudaemoniac, blessed by God with beauty, health, luck, and a physical inability to feel regret.
I cannot, for the life of me, go see either David Wilcox or Kim Mitchell in concert.
Every time I try, something comes up. Most recently, I tried to go see Kim Mitchell, and he had a heart attack before the show and had to cancel.
The strangest thing is that they're both Canadian acts, and I live in one of the biggest cities in Canada, so its not like they only come around once every five or ten years. Its become like a yearly occurence of finding out why I wont see them this time lol.
height
I'm clumsy. The more care I take over over lifting food to my mouth, the more likely it is to go on my shirt. And I've injured my wife twice while trying to be cute and loving.