I have the “interesting” conundrum
of wanting to do “social” things, but having no real desire to
connect with any of the people involved. I've said about a million
times I don't care for small talk, even if I'm well aware that it's
the safest and most polite way to feel people out before you get to
anything interesting. I'm not terribly interested in the details of
my own background, what I do, where I'm from, and knowing you're from
Pittsburgh when I won't remember your name until maybe month 3 or 4
I'm sure just dislodges something else I'd rather remember. It's not
like something insidious where I dislike the people either. I'm just
not interested in them.
Now, I know why this happens. I'm always in observation mode. When I'm “getting along,” without pathologizing it, I'm always in some kind of “manipulation.” For the sake of civility or getting you to move on to someone more interested, of course I remain polite. But, for me, there is no “test.” I'm not trying to find out if you're normal. I want to know immediately why you're weird. I want to know how you don't fit. I want you to be kind of off-putting and aware of it.
I think about this when I meet new “nice” people. The dedicated nerd, perhaps. They have a proper thing to study, and they're proud of their geeky hobbies. The several I have in mind are from my town's community band. They'll bond over fun facts about town or that function they played in together. I barely get, “Hello, nice to meet you” right. I kind of pause and smile and wait until they retreat when they realize I've no follow-up questions for them and didn't really want to answer whatever it is they asked.
I want to be in some kind of band though. I don't want to lose my chops forever. I want to see myself improve on counting or sight-reading. I don't need a 20 minute snack break, and I don't want to buy anyone else snacks. Of course, my only option is to roll with what's available, or pretend I could start my own thing. Just like I want to be “green” and learn all kinds of garden stuff, but damned if the hippies aren't a group of bizarre and high-strung disorganized ickiness.
It's always important to remember, it's not like I don't try! I don't judge. I don't make comments. I don't pick at or make jokes. I play along. I help out with whatever tasks I'm assigned. I play the...2nd...part. My day job is to bullshit people into compliance. I can offer a stupid factoid about myself here and there. I can look you in the eye and smile as you tell me how long it took you to get back into playing music. But, as with most things, I'm there for incredibly selfish reasons, not so much to make friends. Any association that somehow bubbles to the top alongside my reasons for being there has to be an accident and afterthought.
I thought this would be a nice lead in to another thought I've been kicking around lately. I think I'm deathly afraid of “success.” There's 2 kinds of success. There's winning other people's games, and winning your own. I think a huge component to why I'm no longer in drug studies is that I was panicking about beating my own game. I genuinely felt that I was going to just start making money, doing my thing, and there was nothing else but to finally feel good about it. Psychologically conditioned me who always has to find something to push against couldn't handle that. Options? Real freedom? Bad tasting smug status updates? That shit is overwhelming in its very conception.
I don't know if I'll ever feel like I deserve to not be panicking. It's not that I have an ever-growing list of demands and “things” that will keep me thirsty. I just know when certain bricks are in place, I'm going to walk like my shoes aren't covered in mud. “Panic” doesn't describe the thought of becoming friends with someone new, as that's an old and boring pattern. But I do freak out that I could have something I'm so earnestly proud of I can't help but pour that enthusiasm onto anyone dumb enough to ask.
If I do make the “nice” people think I'm nice too, I do get a little...bendy. What could I make them do? What could I ask them for? I've played years-long games with people convincing them I'm one way over another. Not even insidiously, but omission is omission. That's who I am. I either need to be unable to mold you, or to stay away from you. When you tell me, with every micro movement of your face and body, that you're looking for me to signal in the ways “normal” signals, I've not only lost the respect for you that would keep me from trying to play with you, but I'm tempted to see how easy that shell is to crack. You know what kind of story people love? The redemption of yourself from their first impression. You know, I was just shy, or something.
I'd love to see what my face does throughout the day when I'm talking to people. I've been told enough times that I wear every thing I'm thinking on it immediately. I want to know if people are responding to an innate boredom face or measure of contempt that I've been cornered or made to play off a bad joke. I wonder if they feel bad by how I look at them because they can see how little they're registering in my eyes. Part of me would consider this unfortunate, another part says it's just a consequence of my built-in filter which I cherish.
The problem is that I don't meet people like me to tell me about me. I wow drunk kids at the bar occasionally by picking them and their friends apart based on the looks on their faces or how they talk. I never get the same courtesy. Or, I get the two-by-four to the face “style” that says something like, “YOU LIKE TO ARGUE!” Well, no, but I gather you've recognized I'm quick to the contrary or offer another explanation. Often, it's something akin to, “YOU THINK YOU'RE BETTER THAN EVERYONE.” To which the only response is, “Of course, because I'm honest about how much I actually hate myself.” So much so, that the hate dissipates and I actually don't, and that ironic conflicting confidence is hard to grapple with. It's a story told in my smirk, shifty eyes, and other ticks. Your move, Ekman.
There's some important things to be said about this condition. One, I don't think it's a bad thing. I don't, nor have ever wanted to be, friends with everyone. Two, as with most things I'm forever in my head about, as long as I don't actively try to hurt someone with my perspective and despite my temptations, I think it's perfectly acceptable to let people just deal with their internal conflicts, or disregarding, of your presence. It's not so simple as to say “I don't want to fit in.” It's that I've never fit in, no matter how good I am at playing along when I have to. The only other person properly off in their own world during our 20 minute interlude was the autistic kid staring at something on the bookshelf from the floor. Game recognize game.
I'm five questions away from turning someone around on me any moment. “How long have you been with the band? I envy how you seem to get those solos down so quick, what's your secret? I've got like 7 other instruments I'd like to learn back home, do you play anything else? If I made copies, would you want some? Tell me literally the 20 minute version of anything I could possibly ask you about because you're 50+ and are default interesting enough with a wealth of life experience.”
I've heard the phrase a lot lately, “peel back the onion.” That's more my kind of long con. I pock the conversation with certain identifiers in the jokes I make. I see who laughs the loudest. They start approaching me to be their buddy. I find out their kind of insecurity. If I wanted to take a social angle, I'd meet them out for too many drinks, and goad a kind of boldness about an incorrigible position or aid in breaking down some barrier. To stave off the resentment you put in distance as their sober and hungover heart reflects on what I MADE them do or say. So you ingratiate yourself towards the people they admire or get along with, and they begrudgingly accept that they'll have to play along because the evidence of your treachery took so long and made them feel so bad, it's easier to forget, and they'd never find the words to explain it if they tried to press the issue. It'll be enough to ride a rumor or nitpick the signifiers of the kind of person I am I was throwing out from the beginning that you no longer laugh so hard at.
All the while I won't know if I'm having fun, feeling nothing, or supposed to be playing this role as nothing else seems more proper or worthwhile. The world is run by people like me with higher-order delusions about their command of their perspective. That is, they command an audience, as do I, but I wish everyone to be in on the joke. I know what patterns I can repeat or how to break down different types after my cold read. To the degree I use their unwillingness to recognize and rebuke against them is something of a measure of my morality. That I'm so blatant a force for amoral destruction coming strains my sympathy.
Maybe I'm just scared of returning to the past. Making it fluid again. Convincing myself the “best” version of me is to not think so much and just pursue as earnestly as I did to whatever ends I demanded. Saying it out loud makes me certain that's probably wrong to do, but then, I've been stranded in the deep end alone for a while and don't know how much longer I'll keep kicking. At least you'll have all the facts if you bear witness to my trial.
Now, I know why this happens. I'm always in observation mode. When I'm “getting along,” without pathologizing it, I'm always in some kind of “manipulation.” For the sake of civility or getting you to move on to someone more interested, of course I remain polite. But, for me, there is no “test.” I'm not trying to find out if you're normal. I want to know immediately why you're weird. I want to know how you don't fit. I want you to be kind of off-putting and aware of it.
I think about this when I meet new “nice” people. The dedicated nerd, perhaps. They have a proper thing to study, and they're proud of their geeky hobbies. The several I have in mind are from my town's community band. They'll bond over fun facts about town or that function they played in together. I barely get, “Hello, nice to meet you” right. I kind of pause and smile and wait until they retreat when they realize I've no follow-up questions for them and didn't really want to answer whatever it is they asked.
I want to be in some kind of band though. I don't want to lose my chops forever. I want to see myself improve on counting or sight-reading. I don't need a 20 minute snack break, and I don't want to buy anyone else snacks. Of course, my only option is to roll with what's available, or pretend I could start my own thing. Just like I want to be “green” and learn all kinds of garden stuff, but damned if the hippies aren't a group of bizarre and high-strung disorganized ickiness.
It's always important to remember, it's not like I don't try! I don't judge. I don't make comments. I don't pick at or make jokes. I play along. I help out with whatever tasks I'm assigned. I play the...2nd...part. My day job is to bullshit people into compliance. I can offer a stupid factoid about myself here and there. I can look you in the eye and smile as you tell me how long it took you to get back into playing music. But, as with most things, I'm there for incredibly selfish reasons, not so much to make friends. Any association that somehow bubbles to the top alongside my reasons for being there has to be an accident and afterthought.
I thought this would be a nice lead in to another thought I've been kicking around lately. I think I'm deathly afraid of “success.” There's 2 kinds of success. There's winning other people's games, and winning your own. I think a huge component to why I'm no longer in drug studies is that I was panicking about beating my own game. I genuinely felt that I was going to just start making money, doing my thing, and there was nothing else but to finally feel good about it. Psychologically conditioned me who always has to find something to push against couldn't handle that. Options? Real freedom? Bad tasting smug status updates? That shit is overwhelming in its very conception.
I don't know if I'll ever feel like I deserve to not be panicking. It's not that I have an ever-growing list of demands and “things” that will keep me thirsty. I just know when certain bricks are in place, I'm going to walk like my shoes aren't covered in mud. “Panic” doesn't describe the thought of becoming friends with someone new, as that's an old and boring pattern. But I do freak out that I could have something I'm so earnestly proud of I can't help but pour that enthusiasm onto anyone dumb enough to ask.
If I do make the “nice” people think I'm nice too, I do get a little...bendy. What could I make them do? What could I ask them for? I've played years-long games with people convincing them I'm one way over another. Not even insidiously, but omission is omission. That's who I am. I either need to be unable to mold you, or to stay away from you. When you tell me, with every micro movement of your face and body, that you're looking for me to signal in the ways “normal” signals, I've not only lost the respect for you that would keep me from trying to play with you, but I'm tempted to see how easy that shell is to crack. You know what kind of story people love? The redemption of yourself from their first impression. You know, I was just shy, or something.
I'd love to see what my face does throughout the day when I'm talking to people. I've been told enough times that I wear every thing I'm thinking on it immediately. I want to know if people are responding to an innate boredom face or measure of contempt that I've been cornered or made to play off a bad joke. I wonder if they feel bad by how I look at them because they can see how little they're registering in my eyes. Part of me would consider this unfortunate, another part says it's just a consequence of my built-in filter which I cherish.
The problem is that I don't meet people like me to tell me about me. I wow drunk kids at the bar occasionally by picking them and their friends apart based on the looks on their faces or how they talk. I never get the same courtesy. Or, I get the two-by-four to the face “style” that says something like, “YOU LIKE TO ARGUE!” Well, no, but I gather you've recognized I'm quick to the contrary or offer another explanation. Often, it's something akin to, “YOU THINK YOU'RE BETTER THAN EVERYONE.” To which the only response is, “Of course, because I'm honest about how much I actually hate myself.” So much so, that the hate dissipates and I actually don't, and that ironic conflicting confidence is hard to grapple with. It's a story told in my smirk, shifty eyes, and other ticks. Your move, Ekman.
There's some important things to be said about this condition. One, I don't think it's a bad thing. I don't, nor have ever wanted to be, friends with everyone. Two, as with most things I'm forever in my head about, as long as I don't actively try to hurt someone with my perspective and despite my temptations, I think it's perfectly acceptable to let people just deal with their internal conflicts, or disregarding, of your presence. It's not so simple as to say “I don't want to fit in.” It's that I've never fit in, no matter how good I am at playing along when I have to. The only other person properly off in their own world during our 20 minute interlude was the autistic kid staring at something on the bookshelf from the floor. Game recognize game.
I'm five questions away from turning someone around on me any moment. “How long have you been with the band? I envy how you seem to get those solos down so quick, what's your secret? I've got like 7 other instruments I'd like to learn back home, do you play anything else? If I made copies, would you want some? Tell me literally the 20 minute version of anything I could possibly ask you about because you're 50+ and are default interesting enough with a wealth of life experience.”
I've heard the phrase a lot lately, “peel back the onion.” That's more my kind of long con. I pock the conversation with certain identifiers in the jokes I make. I see who laughs the loudest. They start approaching me to be their buddy. I find out their kind of insecurity. If I wanted to take a social angle, I'd meet them out for too many drinks, and goad a kind of boldness about an incorrigible position or aid in breaking down some barrier. To stave off the resentment you put in distance as their sober and hungover heart reflects on what I MADE them do or say. So you ingratiate yourself towards the people they admire or get along with, and they begrudgingly accept that they'll have to play along because the evidence of your treachery took so long and made them feel so bad, it's easier to forget, and they'd never find the words to explain it if they tried to press the issue. It'll be enough to ride a rumor or nitpick the signifiers of the kind of person I am I was throwing out from the beginning that you no longer laugh so hard at.
All the while I won't know if I'm having fun, feeling nothing, or supposed to be playing this role as nothing else seems more proper or worthwhile. The world is run by people like me with higher-order delusions about their command of their perspective. That is, they command an audience, as do I, but I wish everyone to be in on the joke. I know what patterns I can repeat or how to break down different types after my cold read. To the degree I use their unwillingness to recognize and rebuke against them is something of a measure of my morality. That I'm so blatant a force for amoral destruction coming strains my sympathy.
Maybe I'm just scared of returning to the past. Making it fluid again. Convincing myself the “best” version of me is to not think so much and just pursue as earnestly as I did to whatever ends I demanded. Saying it out loud makes me certain that's probably wrong to do, but then, I've been stranded in the deep end alone for a while and don't know how much longer I'll keep kicking. At least you'll have all the facts if you bear witness to my trial.
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