A rant about my "Antisocial Tendencies" [Writer's Journal]

The other day I took a Lyft to downtown San Diego. I have been in San Diego for a few months but have yet to go downtown. My driver asked me if I'd gone to Comicon. I hadn't. I'd met another writer recently who told me they'd get me in, but they also said the experience really wasn't worth it, so I declined. The driver responded with disbelief. To him, he couldn't possibly comprehend why someone would just want to stay at home and write if they had the opportunity to do otherwise.

I feel as if I'm consistently pressured to go "hang out", to "make friends", to "socialize", and then repeatedly and brutally punished for the attempt. Which is the general problem that I have with humanity - I'm pressured to do things to satisfy other people's ideas about what's correct and good and pleasurable for them, but may not be enjoyable for me.

Sometimes I'm able to grab onto a tenuous thread of enjoyment and find things to appreciate about these outings, but it's a thin, spider-webbed kind of enjoyment, that's pieced together by unfocusing certain things, and focusing others, until I have a distorted lens-view of the world and my position in it. This tenuous thread can come crashing down at any moment, because it's being held by gossamer.

It's generally the brutal, and insidious reminder: I DO NOT UNDERSTAND YOU BUT DO WHAT I WANT.

It's the quiet and angry idea of obligation.

It's the mirror that people demand I hold up so they can block me out but see themselves.

"Why do you never go to lunch with us?" "Why do you hang out in your room all day like a weirdo?" "Come on, just one beer." "Have a shot of Jager." "You're so damn awkward." "Come on, just one shot. Why not?" "Stop acting like an anorexic and eat the damn cake." "You don't have an anxiety disorder. EVERYONE has anxiety."

For years I desperately wanted to be liked to the point of blocking my own desires out, grinning like a wounded dog when people insulted me or told me that I wasn't good enough, buying gifts for succubi and cigarettes for demons, offering up my body to anyone who gave me attention because I wanted desperately to be validated. Wanted desperately to be "cool enough," taking every ounce of strength in me to say "no" and run out of a house when some coked-up guy wanted to duct tape me to a chair (for reasons I'm still unsure of). Able to say "No", but unable to make myself run away, when I got home and my roommate made me listen to Massive Attack and took off my clothes, even though I despised him.

I don't know when it broke in me. It'd been breaking for a long time. When I was at the goth club dripping absinthe in my blood, and I smiled and blushed when a woman I hated started flirting with me, much to the chagrin of her onlooking girlfriend. When I ended up in bed with them later, I was rupturing out of the seams.

I stopped feeling much of anything. I was so disconnected from myself and my wants that I could no longer understand how I felt.

And I broke slowly, a period of months after that, when I attempted to integrate myself into other people’s lives - the drug dealer, the boy at the coffee shop, the guys at Bizzarocon, almost going out for drinks with a fellow horror writer before he told me he wanted to fuck me until I cried.

But I know that at my happiest moment, when I first started dating my now-boyfriend, I withdrew from that world. I withdrew not because I was depressed, BUT BECAUSE I WAS HAPPY. Because I let go of the things that I persisted and sweated for, in these desperate moments to please. My girlfriend at the time said, “I was going to complain that all you did was sit at your computer and drink beer, but I realized it made you happy.”

In my happiest moments, I am either with someone I love and appreciate and feel like I am not wasting a single moment, or I am alone. I am done with shallow relationships built on the easiest of validations. I am done crucifying myself for the smile of people that I hate to the core. And subsequently, hating myself, for making them like me. For becoming a THING like them.

I get it. I’m boring. I’m anti-social. I don’t have any fun. When my dad came to visit and he asked if my boyfriend and I really did anything outside of the house I said “Not really.” My dad said, “See, I feel like I have less time so I want to do more.” But what I do now IS doing more. I don’t want to waste my time talking to people I don’t care about and don’t find interesting, in dimly lit bars, to be assaulted and prodded and insulted and forced to smile, forced to be a THING. I want to do things that I personally find valuable.

I pry universes out from underneath my fingernails. I create up worlds. I fly through space. I delve into video games and books. I run by myself in near darkness, watching the sunrise come up over the trees, my breath rising in my throat. All of creation like a quiet birth, sliding into a new heartbeat.

But I’m “boring” because I don’t go hang out at a coffee shop?

Follow me on twitter, facebook, or on my website. You can also buy my books here
Photo from pixabay
Self portrait by me canon t51

Some of my other posts you may be interested in:
[Short Story] He Whispers Like Flowers
Taking a Risk Isn't The Ultimate Answer, It's Only The Beginning // Writer's Journal
Essentials For A Writer's Wardrobe
How Shadow People From My Dreams Taught Me The Power of Fear and Improved My Writing
At the San Diego Dog Beach // PTSD // Recovery Journal
[Short Story] Letter to The Girl That Ate My Skin