last edited: 2023-07-31

it’s difficult

For as long as I could remember, making friends has been somewhat of a struggle for me. People who know me will 100% attest to this, since from the outside I am a pretty sociable person, good, and pretty known around. I think the word one would use is “popular”, but this means absolutely nothing to me. In reality, trying to make any sort of connection is very difficult for me. Trauma, being neurodivergent, and having low self-confidence all plays a role in this, and has caused me to make major mistakes with those around me. It’s normally me messing up, and trying to make good. I’ve gotten better at that. I’ve gotten good at owning up to my mistakes, and trying to push through to correct what was wrong.

I will always say this. I’m always a believer in a comeback. It’s not over ’till it’s over. But sometimes, you have no choice. Sometimes, you just roll unlucky and the people around you don’t understand or even want to understand your problems. They don’t want to hear what’s going on because it sounds like excuses and trying to shift blame. I sound pretty goofy most of the time, and it’s honestly a coping mechanism for me to verbally sound sarcastic or joking all the time, no matter the context. It makes the mood lighter in my head. It makes any challenge ahead of me easier to tackle. Others don’t understand that, and sometimes others don’t want to know.

I’ve learned through therapy that what I do in these situations is not manipulative, “blame-shifting”, or playing the victim card. It’s having compassion for oneself. I have compassion for myself. I can’t express it enough through spoken word, and I can’t have anyone read inside of my brain. I try to be vocal about my thoughts to make sure that what I’m saying is right or not. If I don’t have people around me to correct me, I’ll never learn. I live to make mistakes to grow off of them. Being quiet and timid has gotten me nowhere. If my own friends around me don’t want to call me out for my mistakes in the moment, or talk me through anything, are they really friends? Or are they yes-men? Or are they very non-confrontational?

I’ve always been a person which in the event of a disagreement, I need time for myself to think things over so I can give my thoughts. That doesn’t mean that I’ve seen all perspectives though. That’s very difficult for me. I know life isn’t black and white, but the nuances of life and the action of performing them in social situations proves to be difficult, or a struggle. If I haven’t directly been in that situation, or something of the same nature, I’ll have no idea what to say. I’m someone who’s always looking for an answer. If I can’t find the answer to the equation or the flowchart in my brain, I stop functioning. I’m like some short of shitty robot LOL. Understanding other perspectives I haven’t directly been in completely breaks my brain. I need to be told or explained from another perspective for it to be stored in my robot brain, for me to access later. If that never happens, there’s an almost 0% chance I will ever understand. That’s just how I learn best. If I mess up during this process, I mess up and I own up to it. If I miss something, I have to be reminded or else it’s gone from my brain. I’m not insensitive, I’m not playing the victim, I just take longer to think through these social situations, and have a history of being punished for doing so. This leads me to shutting down, hiding away from everyone, and isolating myself so I don’t “infect” those around me. So I don’t cause more issues.

Being neurodivergent has played a big role in my life. I feel like I don’t identify as a neurodivergent person. I am just a guy who happens to be neurodivergent. If I am later found out to not be neurodivergent, so be it. If I find out later I don’t have ADHD, so be it. But what I experience and live through at the moment can be put under that label, and that is subject to change if need be. Making connections is hard when people don’t understand what it’s like, when they don’t have compassion for themselves and others, and aren’t willing to be transparent. Transparency is crucial to me. Same with honesty, and open communication. Without any of that, I have trouble reading people. I have trouble understanding what they want, what they want out of me, what they are looking for, what their goals and objectives are. It’s funny because physically I feel like I have a better time understanding and reading people. It makes everything a lot easier. I’m very good at analyzing fine details and movements, gestures, speaking patterns, etc. That obviously comes at a cost. It’s exhausting. It drains the living shit out of me. And I can still be wrong, but I’m afraid of being seen as weird and/or annoying to this day. Growing up in my generation being called “retarded” or “autistic” has always been a negative thing. Hell, I used to say those words daily. I regret it, I still feel that pain to this day. The pain and shame has been internalized inside of me.

It’s funny because I can write all of this out, and speaking with others about my problems is also not that hard for me. It’s what I’ve done for most of my life. Having deep conversations is really fun for me. But having the normal everyday conversations, small talk, shooting the shit, it’s very difficult. I don’t know how to do it. It’s terrifying. I feel awkward, like I want to implode, and it’s because I don’t know how the other person is. I am still someone that can be stigmatized in this country, and after everything that happened with COVID here, it makes me more scared than ever. I still hear intolerant spew ignorant shit from their mouths to this day. It’s disgusting, and it affects me.

TL;DR

I’m scared of connections in fear of being hurt like I have before. I want to be in an environment where I can be judged freely and be treated as an equal. I want to be able to have in-depth conversations with someone about a problem we may have instead of being avoided and ignored. I want to live a life where my deeply rooted trauma response doesn’t take over and cause me to make issues worse by disappearing, running away from my problems instead of sticking it out like I know I should.

lil rant idfk.