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Met Up With a Friend, But Not With the Neighbour

6 years ago2,072 words

I spent a few hours with a friend from university on Tuesday - the first meaningful human contact I've had in months - which was nice. But I haven't talked to the neighbour I talked about in the previous post.

First, thanks to those of you posted on that previous post to encourage me to talk to that person. I haven't - shock, horror, I know - because it's more complicated than that, but I'm going to explain that a bit later in this post. I read all the comments and do appreciate the support a lot, though. It's just a shame that I can't be like "sure, I'll do that right now!" and then it all ends in smiles and puppies and rainbows and such.

I'll get to that in a minute, but first I want to talk about how I spent a few hours with a friend a couple of days ago. Spending time with a friend is an unremarkable part of every day life for most people - and it was for me, too, at least to some degree, while I was at university - but it's been so long since I last spent any meaningful time with another person that I felt that this was worth chronicling in some way.

This friend is someone I met in the first week of the first year of university, and I spent a lot of time with her during that first year. She's the one who I (irritatingly, looking back) described as having slept with a bunch of guys when I knew her. I suppose that's a defining quality that sticks in my mind in regards to her because she was the first - only, I suppose - person I knew who had that kind of experience. Back in school, the nerdy guys I knew never had partners or sex, and the other friends I met in uni were in long-term relationships for the entirety of the time I knew them. Plus I hoped to have sex myself but didn't meet anyone who wanted to with me, so obviously that'd be salient to me (actually this friend almost certainly would have, but I, unlike the other guys she knew, didn't want sex from her - if anything I resisted her advances - and that seems to be why we're still friends... Mixed feelings about that).

I was quite impressed by her, though. It's not that I wasn't expecting to be, as such; at least not due to anything about her in particular. I suppose I've just been exposed to the worst of people indirectly for a while, especially with all the sex- and gender-related stuff in the news and media these days. And all the stuff that the manosphere claims about women, which I'd been investigating recently.

I suppose I shouldn't go into specific details, but she seemed generally willing and able to see things from others' perspectives; to understand the male sex drive, for example, rather than demonising them for it. She seemed more willing to understand and forgive than to judge. Maybe her doing psychology - she's doing a Master's at the moment, which I somewhat envy - contributes to that, but I think she just generally has a high degree of Openness to Experience, and that's why we get along.

And we do get along, it seems. I hadn't actually seen her properly in a long time, and our lives had both gone in quite different directions, so I was expecting awkwardness. There wasn't really any, though; as much as I talk about my anxieties, and probably paint the picture of some word-fumbling incompetent, drooling and stuttering as I remark upon the swell of my fair gal pal's jumper dumplings and wonder aloud what it'd be like to wear their skin as a mask (or whatever), it's not like I'm unable to hold an apparently compelling conversation. She also seemed really glad to see me and reluctant to leave; it was me that suggested I should probably go home (being outside for the first time in weeks was quite draining), which meant her going home on the train, but she seemed happy when I said no, maybe she could get the train an hour later instead. I don't deny evidence like that in favour of self-loathing presumptions, and as such I can accept that I have some value as a companion for people who are interested in the kind of person that I am.

And yet... While I didn't feel anxiety about talking with her, there were two or three minor, two-second long interactions I had with strangers over the course of the day, and they all - according to my demons - went badly. The looks on those strangers' faces were immediately seared into my mind, and during the following day, they came up again and again. They still feel like barbs, which make me flinch when my inner attention flows over them. I'm aware it's ridiculous, but this is what I seek to avoid by avoiding the world. Even minor mistakes, instantly forgotten by everyone but me, leave burning mental scars.

Another thing stuck with me. While I was mentally 'happy' to meet up with this friend, in my heart I didn't really feel anything, which irritates me. Or I suppose I felt anxiety, but no real visceral excitement. I suppose there's a big difference between consciously caring about someone, and having an elusive 'spark' for them, which is much deeper-rooted and beyond control or choice.

Since the period during which our lives overlapped the most also heavily involved that other friend of mine, "B", who I've written about a few times here, she came up a few times. This friend was jealous of her, because I was more interested in B than I was in her. And it's irritating that despite all the things we talked about that should have made me feel happy and glad and appreciative and all that, much of what I thought about after we'd parted ways related to what little we'd talked about concerning B.

It's not like I'm ~deeply in love~ with her or anything like that, though the presence of that visceral spark is undeniable (and so rare for me), and it doesn't seem that such a thing is easily extinguished even when circumstances dramatically change. Most of my feelings relating to B these days are negative, in a self-directed kind of way. Shame, guilt, embarrassment. I'm well aware that my loneliness and desperation led to all kinds of 'toxic' behaviour, and I cringe about it because I know full well that they're mistakes. But it also bothers me that she never said sorry for anything that I was put through, that I'm left feeling that it's 100% my fault, and that we could have at least had a more amicable end to it all if only she'd been willing to talk instead of choosing the more selfish path of self-preservation.

I'm aware that such feelings are a result of out-of-touch idealism, though. Ghosting others is the way things are done these days, it seems. If you get fed up with someone, don't like them anymore, decide they're 'toxic' or whatever, then just sever all ties, block them on everything. That's fine, that's alright! Who cares what they feel anyway? Especially if they hurt you. We're all in it for ourselves, aren't we? Besides, it's good if they suffer, if they made us feel bad in any way at all. They deserve it! Not that they will, though; they'll just forget about us quickly and move on. Everyone does. That's just the way it goes. It's not like you have to live in their mind, to feel their pain. It's just gone from your reality - they are - and you move on.

Perhaps I'm just too... too sensitive, I suppose, for all that. I actually do care about people as more than just a temporary way to fill the time, or a means of fulfilling my own wants until I get bored or some threshold of irritation towards them is breached. Or maybe it's more accurate to say that that elusive, visceral spark creates a kind of metaphorical 'soul bond' which isn't casually severed. I'd probably care a lot less if I lost someone the non-conscious parts of my mind hadn't decided were worthy of feeling that way about. Or maybe it's just a case of frustration because I'm left with a bunch of negative feelings that I can't have another person get rid of for me.

And I suppose that is a big part of it. Knowing that anyone would tell me only I'm responsible for working through these feelings, and that I should 'just move on'; that forgetting about people you've lost - or who've kicked you out, rather - is a normal part of life that almost everyone has to go through. And that's true. I just don't seem to be particularly good at it myself. But I suppose that's largely because I've lacked the opportunities to connect with other people who could serve as replacements, as new targets for those deeper parts of my mind to latch onto. It's notable that I obsessed over my ex for many years after we parted ways, but thought about her rarely once I met new people at university.

Which brings me to the previous post...



I haven't talked to the girl - or woman, I suppose - next door, but it's not like I'm some shy little boy anxiously wringing his hands, trying to muster up the courage to go and talk to the pretty girl across the dance floor.

It's more like... the whole idea of talking to someone else feels so draining at this point. The best case scenario is that we actually do become friends, but that feels more like a chore than a prize. Would I be obligated to interact with her regularly? She lives right next door, and her parents are friends with mine, so it makes the whole thing feel alien and awkward in a way that probably wouldn't be for people who've grown up familiar with very different social dynamics (and without avoidant personality disorder).

If some kind of situation came up that made it feel natural, organic, then I'd not resist that. Like if I went out for a walk and passed her, I'd talk and wouldn't look for an excuse to get away or anything. But forcing it would just be weird, as would getting our parents to set up some awkward 'play date' sort of situation.

Still, even if we do eventually talk, the worst case scenario is that I thoroughly embarrass myself, and either want to die or literally go through with it. To someone who doesn't have this acute sensitivity to negative social evaluation, that'd seem like an insane overreaction, and to my conscious mind it does too. But it's difficult to convey the intensity of this reaction, which is rooted in a faultily-wired limbic system. It's pre-thought, acting underneath cognition and logic, beyond their control. Perhaps I'll learn to cope with it one day, but now isn't exactly the best time.

Anyway, the situation with this person next door isn't something I think about regularly, or stress over. The only reason I wrote about it in the previous post is because my step-dad had literally just come back from the neighbours' house and said he'd talked to her there, and he just wants me to stop being some sad bedroom-dweller (he didn't say that, but it's obvious) so he was presenting it as a way to become more Normal (he's the sort of outgoing guy who had a bunch of girlfriends when he was younger, and his Openness is low; he's very conventional). Which was frustrating, I suppose. I mean, I could see the potential of what he was talking about, but it just... I can't really say it particularly appeals to me. Not right now, anyway. Not with the surgery so close.

And it is close. Less than a week now. Unless it's delayed again, and I hope it's not.

There's some more stuff that I want to talk about, so maybe I'll do that in a post tomorrow, since I'm running out of time (I was going to cram it all into this one, but it's probably best to split it up).