i find myself quite isolated these days.
i live alone in a studio apartment, an hour away from my parents. i do not have any close friends on my college campus, so all i seem to do is wake up, eat, study or go to class, and go back to bed. it is of course true that i also do things to take care of myself and my surroundings, but they seem less like self contained activities and more like temporary side tasks i do to take my mind off my studies. it can get very monotonous at times. i'm unsure of how to break this up. it has been suggested by many people around me that i pick up a hobby in order to have something to do when i am not resting or studying. i find this difficult. i'm not good at understanding what things i like or do well, so i find it stressful to select a hobby to do for fun. the closest thing i have to a hobby would be gardening, but i often find that i cannot engage in this interest for some reason or another. at the present moment, it is the wrong time of year as well as cost prohibitive for me to do anything relating to my garden. this is not to mention that the primary place i garden, my parents' home, is some 50 miles away.
i am frequently told that i ought to try to make more friends. i understand the importance of companionship and friendship, but i find this action, the making of friends, to be very difficult. i'm not sure why. i suppose the act of making a friend is itself quite nebulous a thing. what are the exact steps involved in making a friend? what is the timeline? when has a stranger crossed the threshold into being a friend? when is it appropriate to consider them a close friend? i suppose it is partially this uncertainty which adds to my avoidance of this task. i find that when it comes to others, i tend to assume the worst. i think that people won't want to talk to me. i think that they will find me boring or bothersome. i think they will begin talking to me only to realize after some time that there is something gravely wrong with me, and they will begin to pull away. where do these fears stem from? childhood, probably, but isn't that always the case? i have some memory of being rejected and ostracized by others for reasons i can't place. i was bullied several times throughout my life, although never particularly severely. i always had at least one friend, although i often didn't get to do very much with them outside of a school context. i noticed at some point when i was younger that i had a hard time making new friends, unless i was with someone who i already considered a friend. only in those instances did i find it easier to open. it was still difficult, especially when the mutual friend was gone, but it was considerably less nerve racking. i wonder why this is. i still find myself struggling with most aspects of speaking to others. i'm not entirely sure why i struggle so much. on some level i think i'm afraid of how the other person will respond. i don't necessarily know how to predict what they will say or do, so it's a bit like a surprise to me every time. i can of course understand the patterns, that people generally respond the same way you approach them, that people like it when you smile at them, but somehow i feel i am unable to really put this knowledge into practice. it is a bit like the transition from studying a technique to performing it yourself--it can be quite terrifying the first time. i suppose i could spend some more time studying social interactions, but i don't think that will ultimately help me to get to the doing part of the task. there seems to be a bit of activation energy required, but i am unable to muster it up most times.
i suppose some of this could be explained by anxiety and autism. i'm unsure whether what i'm experiencing really "counts" as it were. sometimes i feel like i somehow tricked a professional into diagnosing me, even though i know i didn't. i've read the accounts of other autistic people and they seem different somehow from what i experience. sometimes they seem less able to elucidate meaning from interactions. i feel a way that is difficult to describe. i feel that i can understand, to some extent, what people are communicating to me. i just struggle to respond to it. i may know how to respond, but my body can't seem to do what it's supposed to. someone smiles at me, and i understand that i ought to smile back, but i simply don't. the thought seems to take too long to be processed, once the fear and shock of being noticed by another human being die down, for me to respond in a timely manner. i don't seem able to respond the right way, even though i know what i should do. isn't this different from other autistics? i seem as though i should be able to seamlessly integrate into neurotypical society, i just can't for some reason or another. is this normal? is this autism? is it something else? sometimes i feel like i can't understand the way my mind works. i seem more anxious than other autistics. many people describe instances in which they speak with inappropriate familiarity to complete strangers; that is, they are unable to sense when they should stop talking. i feel i am the opposite: i cannot sense when i should start talking. i speak fine around my friends and immediate family, though. am i somehow faking whatever prevents me from speaking to strangers? what's going on? it's for these reasons that i was previously diagnosed with selective mutism. but that diagnosis seemed wrong, too. was it that i was fully, physically unable to speak in some circumstances, or did i simply not speak? ability versus desire. i can never tell anymore. i've tried to understand what i'm anxious about, but i find it quite difficult. there doesn't seem to be any one specter that i fear. i don't get debilitating physical symptoms like other people do. i just feel a deep sense of unease that manifests in avoidance. that's all i ever seem to do these days, avoid the things that scare me. look where it has gotten me.
i'm attempting to address some of these issues in therapy. maybe i'll tell my therapist about this blog. it's something of a journal anyway, so i think it would be good to use as a reminder of what things were bothering me during the week. i feel i've made a lot of progress with my depression and generalized anxiety in therapy. but i have made relatively few gains socially. i'm just not sure what is wrong and what to target. i understand what i must do (approach people, push myself to talk to others) but i don't feel i have the will to do it. isn't it strange to do things that have no purpose? i almost find it pointless to talk to others most of the time. if i had anything meaningful to say, i would say it. i guess this is my issue. most people seem to want to talk to each other about things that aren't immediately pressing. they just talk for the sake of it, i think. i understand that that's important in terms of bonding and getting to know people, but i don't know how to do it myself. it just seems pointless to me to talk for no reason. how do you choose what to say? how do you know what to talk about? it's things like this that i struggle to work on. i think i know ultimately what i should be doing, i just lack the energy to really do them. i'm constantly afraid that the living i'm doing is some kind of half formed caricature of the real thing and that actual living will take several times more energy than i'm used to expending now. i feel that interacting with others is probably this way. i know it is. what little of it i've attempted to do myself has always exhausted me. i just don't know how to do it without burning myself out so quickly. it's just easier to be alone. it's painful, and i know it's not healthy, but it's better for my long term survival. what's the point in trying to cultivate a healthy social life if i don't have the energy to live the rest of the time, or the energy to enjoy it? isn't it better to do what is most sustainable long term? isn't this a marathon rather than a sprint? i know this isolation isn't good for me, but until things change in some way, it's all i've got. i suppose i'll just have to get used to it. there's a principle in therapy that i try to apply often: accepting things that i cannot change with serenity and grace. this feels very much like one of those things.
here's a song that i think encapsulates this feeling pretty well. if you know me, you know i'm a big joanna newsom fan. anyway. i'll let you go for now. i'll talk to you later.