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scribal_goddessI'm either very philosophical or very lazy tonight, take your pick. In either case, I've spent most of my evening thinking about humanity, which is kind of a perilous proposition. Starting from the point at which I have to recognize that no other human being can ever fully understand my mental processes, just like I can't understand theirs, I've begun to wonder why, exactly, we define "normal" so narrowly. It could be an artifact of statistics, but I just don't understand why more people aren't faced every day with the idea that they aren't perfectly "normal" every day.(Very few people can be "normal" in all things: actually, the statistical probability of being average - say, within the very middle 10% of everything, intellect, athletic ability, creativity, etc., is probably a lot lower than being in the upper or lower 2% in any given category.)
That said, I'm still going to the school councilor, and still on the fence about whether or not it's going to work. Yup, guys, I'm talking about it in an unlocked post. Those who were just browsing have probably run off by now when they figured this post was going to be about feelings. According to the school councilor, I have social anxiety - not something you guys would have noticed, not being around me in real life. Supposedly that's interacting in a pretty complex way with my personality to start tanking my GPA since I have two math-related classes outside of my main major distribution, where I don't know people. Which, I get why the councilor thinks this - I really don't want to interact with a lot of my new class aquaintances, I do worry a lot that they'll think badly of me because they haven't known me as long as they've known each other, and I definitely stress over disappointing my professors. (That's one drawback to a small faculty-to-student ratio - start asking questions in class and the professors start relying on you for answers during lecture. And then wondering why you keep bombing the weekly quizzes.) At the same time, though, the thought struck me:
What if she's just profiling me, assuming that I must be socially inept somehow because I'm smart and tests have confirmed it? She doesn't have any information I didn't give her, but I had to explain to her why I'd gone to the school's councilor for learning disabilities first, which was because I knew the learning disabilities councilor from when I was a kid and my parents got my intelligence and a bunch of other things tested because they couldn't figure out why I didn't act like the other kids. I suppose that my parents had a good idea of what they were going to get, after I learned to read at three and my "c word" the third day of kindergarten was carotene, but I'm sure they wanted to know for sure, especially since I didn't get along with most of my new classmates. The funny thing is, I don't remember wanting to avoid classmates or being afraid of them when I was eight - I just didn't like boy bands or basketball or Disney Channel or Britney Spears. I liked bugs and mummies and Nancy Drew and National Geographic. At least the boys thought I was cool because I'd pick up worms and put them back where they belonged, in the grass. :)
Now? I still like bugs and mummies and National Geographic Magazine (the tv channel has started to loose some of my respect,) but I'm constantly aware that no matter how much I also like "normal" things, like computer games and music and Inception, people around me don't know how to deal with a girl who can identify the EKG of a rat's brain based on the shape, whose knowlege of physics contains absolutely nothing between basic Newtonian Laws and String Theory, (I'm working on that one, starting with astrophysics and physical chemistry - as it is, it's like eating a sandwich with the filling removed. I want to taste the flavors of quarks!), who only dances at weddings, has never had more alcohol than is in cough drops and who starts giggling at walls after two cans of mountain dew anyway, and who would rather have a Watson than a boyfriend, based on the fact that dashing about town for science is more fun than dating and that kissing tastes and feels like cold, wet chicken skin. I don't know how to deal with people who think that mummies are gross (or that they're basically zombies wrapped in toilet paper,) who spend their lives net and tabloid stalking celebrities, who don't know how to meet potential romances without being drunk or at least at a bar or a dance, and who contradict themselves and reinforce the double standards of society without realizing it. I don't know how to deal with people who don't vote because "union trouble," or "gay marriage," or "the national budget," are things they've decided don't affect them. I don't know how to narrow my feild of vision and not turn conversations to multiverse theory or the comic deaths of greek playwrights, or turtles or at least a good book. I mean, I can concentrate on a certain subject or a certain person, but as often as not I don't get results when I invite people into my world, which isn't exactly a small one. I've had to learn to be selective about who gets invited in the first place, because not everyone is safe. At best, people who aren't safe for me to care too much about are disappointing - they hang around for a while, and then they run away. Sometimes they give reasons - I'm too intense is usually what these things boil down to. They don't seem to realize that I don't have a medium setting for how much I care about a person. I'm missing the middle filling between aquaintance and cherished friend, so they have to make the jump at once, like electrons, to a different shell. There seem to be two types of people: those who can stand being focused on and those who can't. But the ones who can stand to be focused on are even harder to deal with than the ones who can't - sometimes they want to be the only one, and the only thing, and a few of them don't understand that I'm not a moon to orbit around them, that I'm my own person and am capable of focusing just as hard on a caterpillar or a drawing or a story.
That's the other reason I don't think I'll ever get married or have a boyfriend. I doubt anyone romantically interested in me would be able to tolerate me focusing on other people's brains to the extent that I do. I haven't the first clue of how to flirt, but seperate observers have wrongly pegged me as being in a relationship with each of my best friends, based on how much I focus on them. At the same time, though - I don't want to be alone, but you don't get to keep people, not when you're still in school, not when you have nothing to promise them. I want to go back to the days where a pinky swear meant trust and loyalty for as much as a child could understand of forever, but the thought that those days are forever shattered for me is almost too much for me to bear. I simply can't trust new people that much anymore. I know it's part of growing up, and that having some carefully shelved fear of humanity in general is a reasonable reaction to having been human and seen human beings for almost twenty one years now, but damn it if it doesn't make me feel alone.
Maybe that's why people choose to care less, and to not focus as hard or spread their net of caring so widely or love quite as strongly as I do. If they focus on parties and school drama and drinking and boyfriends and romance novels and stars, they'll keep putting more stuff in their brain and filling it up, distracting themselves from being alone. Or maybe that's just me - for all I know, all the people around me aren't looking ahead into the empty future and wondering if they'll be worth it. They could be living in the moment, or searching for someone to share that future with in the hopes that the uncertainties of life will shrink.
I'm graduating. Not soon, but soon enough that I can feel it looking over my shoulder. All my life I've assumed that most people I've met, besides family and the ones that I've known since I was an infant, won't stay a fixture in my life, but I've never been waiting to face a future where I was fairly certain that no one would be there with me. By the end of high school, I was just ready to escape the madness, because everyone told me that things would be better in college. I went with optimism - I figured life would fall into place when I picked a major, believed my mother when she said that I would "find the right guy," in college, thought that people would like me better in a place where half the population are "geeks." Instead it turns out that I'm beyond these people's definition of normal too.
Well, I shouldn't imply that it's everyone - I've found quite a few people who can stand to be focused on (and I've actually been able to collect them all in one room at the same time because they actually get along,) and have gotten a bit better at dealing with people who would prefer that I not focus on them, without ignoring them completely. I just don't know what to do when it's all over. It would be easier if I didn't need people quite so much, but asexual or not I'm not a machine. But if I'm having this much trouble on a college campus, where the vast majority of the population should be the kind of people I might want to get to know, how am I going to deal with the world after school, where the main avenues for meeting new people seem to be drinking and religions? I'm not too impressed with either.
It's not as if I can advertize in the papers or e-harmony for a live-in best friend.
Intellectual type asexual seeking platonic company. Must be willing to tolerate puns, have a strong gag reflex for the inappropriate lunchtime discussion of types of mummies and other instances of too much information of a scientific or archaeological nature, and agree to disagree at times on politics. A taste for mysteries is preferred, though no actual mysteries are likely to be solved. Interviewee in turn promises to keep musical efforts to a minimum, remain reasonably quiet during sleeping hours, refrain from spoiling books the applicant actually wishes to read, and share cooking and cleaning duties equitably.
I seem to have lost my original train of thought. Oh well - it's likely that you've forgotten it by now too, if you've made it to this point.
I really am okay, I'm just nervous about everything from this moment in time onwards. I don't like not having a reasonable idea of what's ahead.
That said, I'm still going to the school councilor, and still on the fence about whether or not it's going to work. Yup, guys, I'm talking about it in an unlocked post. Those who were just browsing have probably run off by now when they figured this post was going to be about feelings. According to the school councilor, I have social anxiety - not something you guys would have noticed, not being around me in real life. Supposedly that's interacting in a pretty complex way with my personality to start tanking my GPA since I have two math-related classes outside of my main major distribution, where I don't know people. Which, I get why the councilor thinks this - I really don't want to interact with a lot of my new class aquaintances, I do worry a lot that they'll think badly of me because they haven't known me as long as they've known each other, and I definitely stress over disappointing my professors. (That's one drawback to a small faculty-to-student ratio - start asking questions in class and the professors start relying on you for answers during lecture. And then wondering why you keep bombing the weekly quizzes.) At the same time, though, the thought struck me:
What if she's just profiling me, assuming that I must be socially inept somehow because I'm smart and tests have confirmed it? She doesn't have any information I didn't give her, but I had to explain to her why I'd gone to the school's councilor for learning disabilities first, which was because I knew the learning disabilities councilor from when I was a kid and my parents got my intelligence and a bunch of other things tested because they couldn't figure out why I didn't act like the other kids. I suppose that my parents had a good idea of what they were going to get, after I learned to read at three and my "c word" the third day of kindergarten was carotene, but I'm sure they wanted to know for sure, especially since I didn't get along with most of my new classmates. The funny thing is, I don't remember wanting to avoid classmates or being afraid of them when I was eight - I just didn't like boy bands or basketball or Disney Channel or Britney Spears. I liked bugs and mummies and Nancy Drew and National Geographic. At least the boys thought I was cool because I'd pick up worms and put them back where they belonged, in the grass. :)
Now? I still like bugs and mummies and National Geographic Magazine (the tv channel has started to loose some of my respect,) but I'm constantly aware that no matter how much I also like "normal" things, like computer games and music and Inception, people around me don't know how to deal with a girl who can identify the EKG of a rat's brain based on the shape, whose knowlege of physics contains absolutely nothing between basic Newtonian Laws and String Theory, (I'm working on that one, starting with astrophysics and physical chemistry - as it is, it's like eating a sandwich with the filling removed. I want to taste the flavors of quarks!), who only dances at weddings, has never had more alcohol than is in cough drops and who starts giggling at walls after two cans of mountain dew anyway, and who would rather have a Watson than a boyfriend, based on the fact that dashing about town for science is more fun than dating and that kissing tastes and feels like cold, wet chicken skin. I don't know how to deal with people who think that mummies are gross (or that they're basically zombies wrapped in toilet paper,) who spend their lives net and tabloid stalking celebrities, who don't know how to meet potential romances without being drunk or at least at a bar or a dance, and who contradict themselves and reinforce the double standards of society without realizing it. I don't know how to deal with people who don't vote because "union trouble," or "gay marriage," or "the national budget," are things they've decided don't affect them. I don't know how to narrow my feild of vision and not turn conversations to multiverse theory or the comic deaths of greek playwrights, or turtles or at least a good book. I mean, I can concentrate on a certain subject or a certain person, but as often as not I don't get results when I invite people into my world, which isn't exactly a small one. I've had to learn to be selective about who gets invited in the first place, because not everyone is safe. At best, people who aren't safe for me to care too much about are disappointing - they hang around for a while, and then they run away. Sometimes they give reasons - I'm too intense is usually what these things boil down to. They don't seem to realize that I don't have a medium setting for how much I care about a person. I'm missing the middle filling between aquaintance and cherished friend, so they have to make the jump at once, like electrons, to a different shell. There seem to be two types of people: those who can stand being focused on and those who can't. But the ones who can stand to be focused on are even harder to deal with than the ones who can't - sometimes they want to be the only one, and the only thing, and a few of them don't understand that I'm not a moon to orbit around them, that I'm my own person and am capable of focusing just as hard on a caterpillar or a drawing or a story.
That's the other reason I don't think I'll ever get married or have a boyfriend. I doubt anyone romantically interested in me would be able to tolerate me focusing on other people's brains to the extent that I do. I haven't the first clue of how to flirt, but seperate observers have wrongly pegged me as being in a relationship with each of my best friends, based on how much I focus on them. At the same time, though - I don't want to be alone, but you don't get to keep people, not when you're still in school, not when you have nothing to promise them. I want to go back to the days where a pinky swear meant trust and loyalty for as much as a child could understand of forever, but the thought that those days are forever shattered for me is almost too much for me to bear. I simply can't trust new people that much anymore. I know it's part of growing up, and that having some carefully shelved fear of humanity in general is a reasonable reaction to having been human and seen human beings for almost twenty one years now, but damn it if it doesn't make me feel alone.
Maybe that's why people choose to care less, and to not focus as hard or spread their net of caring so widely or love quite as strongly as I do. If they focus on parties and school drama and drinking and boyfriends and romance novels and stars, they'll keep putting more stuff in their brain and filling it up, distracting themselves from being alone. Or maybe that's just me - for all I know, all the people around me aren't looking ahead into the empty future and wondering if they'll be worth it. They could be living in the moment, or searching for someone to share that future with in the hopes that the uncertainties of life will shrink.
I'm graduating. Not soon, but soon enough that I can feel it looking over my shoulder. All my life I've assumed that most people I've met, besides family and the ones that I've known since I was an infant, won't stay a fixture in my life, but I've never been waiting to face a future where I was fairly certain that no one would be there with me. By the end of high school, I was just ready to escape the madness, because everyone told me that things would be better in college. I went with optimism - I figured life would fall into place when I picked a major, believed my mother when she said that I would "find the right guy," in college, thought that people would like me better in a place where half the population are "geeks." Instead it turns out that I'm beyond these people's definition of normal too.
Well, I shouldn't imply that it's everyone - I've found quite a few people who can stand to be focused on (and I've actually been able to collect them all in one room at the same time because they actually get along,) and have gotten a bit better at dealing with people who would prefer that I not focus on them, without ignoring them completely. I just don't know what to do when it's all over. It would be easier if I didn't need people quite so much, but asexual or not I'm not a machine. But if I'm having this much trouble on a college campus, where the vast majority of the population should be the kind of people I might want to get to know, how am I going to deal with the world after school, where the main avenues for meeting new people seem to be drinking and religions? I'm not too impressed with either.
It's not as if I can advertize in the papers or e-harmony for a live-in best friend.
Intellectual type asexual seeking platonic company. Must be willing to tolerate puns, have a strong gag reflex for the inappropriate lunchtime discussion of types of mummies and other instances of too much information of a scientific or archaeological nature, and agree to disagree at times on politics. A taste for mysteries is preferred, though no actual mysteries are likely to be solved. Interviewee in turn promises to keep musical efforts to a minimum, remain reasonably quiet during sleeping hours, refrain from spoiling books the applicant actually wishes to read, and share cooking and cleaning duties equitably.
I seem to have lost my original train of thought. Oh well - it's likely that you've forgotten it by now too, if you've made it to this point.
I really am okay, I'm just nervous about everything from this moment in time onwards. I don't like not having a reasonable idea of what's ahead.
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no subject
Date: 2012-12-03 05:04 am (UTC)If you were one of mine, I'd talk to you (or your parents really, since my estudiantes are all 12/13/14 yr olds) about the possibility of asperger's. The feelings you are describing are similar to asperger type socialization feelings and learning experiences, so you might ask your counselor about that, or it could just be square peg/ round hole, which a lot of us have. :P
People spend so much time thinking they are normal because society places a lot of value on "normal" and people can't bear the thought that they might be somehow rejected by their society. And it pretty much sucks for those of us that realize that they aren't "normal".
no subject
Date: 2012-12-03 01:16 pm (UTC)I guess that just lately I've been finding that most of the holes in my part of the world are round. :/
no subject
Date: 2012-12-04 06:04 am (UTC)/counselor hat
I suspect, though, that there are people similar to you at your university, the trick would be tracking them down. I was lucky in that I was part of a relatively small honor's program that was kind of it's own sub-school and we were all used to being weird, so even if we didn't share the same interests, we stuck to each-other due to shared experience.
no subject
Date: 2012-12-04 07:27 pm (UTC)We do have a school-wide honors program but I kind of fell out of it when I started my major - there were plenty of other science majors in the program, but I was the only Environmental Science major and definitely the only Sciences/Humanities double major. They're fun, but I've never really had opportunity to interact with them beyond freshman year, because double majoring will eat your life.
Like I said, I have met a lot of great people, but communicating with them can be kind of hard. :/
Hmm, I think I read an article on having more communication circuts in the brain - but of course, since a lot of neural connections occur when you learn something, it could be socialization too.
no subject
Date: 2012-12-05 02:06 am (UTC)Really, I'm a school counselor and I have a counselor drawer that contains tissue, energy bars for people who forget their lunch, feminine hygiene products, and crayons for meetings that include much younger siblings. I have 450ish middle school students under my care (my co-worker had the other 450).
We also seem to store information differently, so there are more access points for retrieval. The brain is kind of cool
no subject
Date: 2012-12-05 02:52 am (UTC)Haha, I know how it is - my mom works as a fifth grade teacher, and after parent teacher conferences every year she comes home, throws her hands up, and says "Now I know exactly why those kids are the way they are." I see why you need a survival kit in your desk. :)
I usually lose my pens in the chem labs. Then I get really nervous around them if I get them back because I occasionally nibble on them and I don't want anything from lab in my mouth, ever.
What else do you know about the brain? All I've got for right now is that people get more neural connections in different places when they learn multiple languages.
no subject
Date: 2012-12-05 04:29 am (UTC)Lets see, cool things about the brain:
If you have a traumatic brain injury that injures basically an entire brain hemisphere or are born with a birth-defect that leaves you with one functional brain hemisphere, the brain will transfer almost all necessary functions to the remaining hemisphere, even though the two hemispheres are set up to do entirely different things.
There is speculation that the more texture/folds/twisty bits you have on the surface of your brain, the smarter you are.
IQ is, in some ways, a social construct rather than a biological function, which is why you can't give an IQ test to an African-American child.
If you scan someone's brain you can tell things about brain-related abilities and disabilities and substance abuse based on the energy levels in different parts of the brain.
Some kinds of meditation increase brain activity and there are parts of sleep where the brain is very active which we think might involve processing short-term memory into long term.
It is possible to store information in longterm memory without it having passed through short term memory.
A really cool one- you can learn information, even if the part of the brain that would normally process the information has been injured in a way that disallows learning through it and without being aware of learning it. IIRC, they did one study where they showed a person with a brain injury that blinded them (or, really destroyed a particular set of visual processing centers) a picture. The person could not consciously see the picture and was not told what the picture was, but when asked what it was, they knew.
Gay men often have parts of their brains that work in ways that are more similar to women's brains than to straight men's.
The brain processes music in a lot of the same ways it processes math.
People tend to learn better while listening to complex music (specifically Mozart IIRC) than simple music.
Random factoids, I haz them. :P
no subject
Date: 2012-12-05 02:04 pm (UTC)About the IQ test - well, I kind of see how the testing part might not work as well on a kid that's got different societal expectations weighing in on things, but how does that work?
I knew about the bits with the activity - once in chem 1 the notes got delayed a whole day because everyone wanted to talk about EKG scans that had been in the slideshow. (It was kind of a "this is your brain, this is your brain on drugs," comparison slide, and we spent a good half hour trying to figure out whether or not the picture was really of a rat's brain. It was.)
Braaaaaaaains.
no subject
Date: 2012-12-03 01:14 pm (UTC)I have issues making friends with people because my default is loving and clingy as hell but I've been rejected more than once before and don't handle it well, so I stay and seem really distant, at least until a hypothetical certain point where I will probably go from like 0 - 60 overnight X) It's also why I'm far more outgoing and open with the love on the internet, where it's not (so?) threatening to people. And why I love that anonymous Christmas love thread so much.
Also, I had the same thoughts about meeting people as you for when I graduated, but I have managed it by finding clubs outside of uni; my table-top roleplaying has introduced me to a bunch of new people (mostly older and married men) and a new hobby that suits me anyway, so it's going far better than expected.
Also, I totally understand you on hating not knowing what's ahead. I must know ALL THE THINGS, hence my playing ahead in sims :P
So, um: you are awesome, I am your friend, and we will help you making everything work out for the best :3 (and if you ever want to just vent your brain about those topics you love, I will probably find them very interesting!)
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Date: 2012-12-03 01:27 pm (UTC)I guess people react better to crazy love and tackle hugs on the internet because it's not like there's actually anyone sneaking up behind them and tackling them. I need to meet more people around here so I have more things to say on the Christmas thread.
That's actually comforting - I'd forgotten that there were sizable geeky populations of interest after college. I kind of dread having to integrate into a new group, but I know I'm going to have to eventually, especially if I move out of town where everyone and their dog knows my family. (No, seriously. Everyone's dogs think I am good for biscuts or at least a good ear scratch. The everyone on the other end of the leash is, at least, reasonably tolerant of me interrupting their walk.)
Thanks, Jess. *hugs.*
no subject
Date: 2012-12-03 09:25 pm (UTC)Diagnoses of being on the spectrum can change over time. We had our son tested at 3 1/2 and were told he was the 'far end of normal' at 6 1/2 we had him tested again and he came back with the label of PDD NOS. At the same time I have heard that it's normal for those who are super bright not to get on with their age mates. Just because at 8 they want to talk about Barbie and you want to talk about mummies just means you have vastly different interests because your brain has already gone past and beyond. I've read it's part of the curse of being brainy and isn't something you can help. I think seeing other kids give a negative reaction to what you are saying would give you social anxiety. That said it wouldn't hurt to get tested for asperger’s.
Also you just need to find a guy who is as brainy as yourself and I'm sure they exist! Maybe try some clubs on things that you're interested in. You might find, finding likeminded people would change how you feel.
no subject
Date: 2012-12-03 10:07 pm (UTC)Eight is definitely before events started eventuating that were what probably gave me the social anxiety in the first place. All the same, it's been twelve years. I don't think the asexual thing's likely to change though - it just kind of sucks because where in the world am I going to find someone willing to spend their life with me without sex and stuff being involved? The vast majority of people who would be romantically interested in me would also be sexually interested in me and it's just a great big mess. :(
no subject
Date: 2012-12-04 09:13 am (UTC)We’re not that far away from Asia but over here we can be a bit too much the other way of 'She'll be right mate' and 'Don't work too hard!' I believe we have more public holidays than any other country. People should just be who they are.
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Date: 2012-12-04 08:26 pm (UTC)I'm all for the people being people. Bring on the people! Especially the human beings, lol.
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Date: 2012-12-04 02:30 am (UTC)Okay, "every" was too extreme, hahaha. But yea, we're way more competitive here and honestly, almost everyone looks up to smart people in class and they are usually very popular and have many "friends". (You know, "friends" who badger you on how to solve questions instead of having an interest in your well-being. :P) You just need the right environment, one where people appreciate and value intelligence. I know it's easier to say than to find one, but hey, the world is such a huge place! Why restrict yourself geographically? ;)
I don't know about the social anxiety and all the other labels (I guess we don't test our kids here unless their behaviours are way off), but you sound totally normal to me. It's not like you don't know how to interact; you just don't enjoy doing what they do. And I don't know what's wrong with that. :D
About the asexual thing, I think it's more likely that you just haven't met somebody who turns you on. ;)
Anyway, the future is always brighter! Just stay positive and your path in life will definitely straighten itself out. *hugs!*
no subject
Date: 2012-12-04 03:23 am (UTC)Yeah, here in america we do tend to make a big fuss as soon as kids act even a little bit different from their classmates. Especially the classmates. :/ Funny, though, I've been badgered for answers quite often enough. I guess I'm just not finding as many people here at college as I expected who have similar interests - though I suppose test scores would be better at American universities if less of my classmates were concentrating on greek life and drinking. Maybe I'd be able to figure out more of their interests, too. :)
This semester, it seems, is one bend in the road after the other.
Oh, also, I forgot -
*Tackles Ning.*
no subject
Date: 2012-12-09 01:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-09 04:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-04 04:02 am (UTC)ME TOO! Well, not the Nancy Drew part (never heard of her `til recently), and they don't show National Geographic on free-to-air tv where I am.
I'm one of those people who, once you've captured my heart, you've got it for life, whether I show my love or not.
Yeah, I'm not much of a "normal" person myself, but considering a lot of what's considered normal these days, I consider that to be a very good thing.
no subject
Date: 2012-12-04 08:31 pm (UTC)Pfft, normality is overrated. I'd have a lot less fun as a normal person, I think. :)
no subject
Date: 2012-12-05 03:38 am (UTC)It sure is! I know I definitely would. :)
no subject
Date: 2012-12-05 01:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-08 03:30 am (UTC)Also I'm terribly sorry for not seeing these posts until now - been avoiding the friends list again lately. Less out of anxiety and more from lack of time though. *really hopes she's not one of the people who thinks you should be a satellite*
Haha, I like the British spelling of advertise there. :)
I also do not have a medium setting. Which has gotten me in trouble in the past.
And oh yes, welcome to the club of those of us who wear our hearts on our unlocked posts. ;)
I hate the Christmas anon thing. But then it's not like I've had a good experience with the Sims community, or with anonymous stuff, and when I see people on there who I know read the secrets, being all sugary sweet and nice - it makes me throw up a little, really. But I'll be quiet about that now.
I don't know. As a person with many of the same issues and a decade older - I found a dude at school who I could get along with, married him, and have spent the last 13 years hanging out with him and, on holidays and birthdays, his family. And making friends on the internet, sometimes with great results (like you) and sometimes with disastrous results. In 2011, the disaster way outweighed the good. This year, there's been a ton more good than bad.
And I really really hate to sound like the stereotypical judge-y person who doesn't believe in asexuality, but it's just...I wasn't extremely interested either, and I'm still not really, but because I like John and feel attached to him, it works there. And only there. Hoo boy am I monogamous. So you know - I'm not trying to invalidate you at all, but I guess I did want to hold out the possibility that maybe you're demisexual like me - not really interested unless there is a very very strong emotional connection.
As for flirting - here are my tips. And do note that I have a 100% success rate, and every guy I've tried this on has shown interest in me.
Pay attention to them, laugh at their jokes, and participate in their interests. Let them teach you things. Make them feel special.
You know how the most popular guy in my high school had a crush on me? I had French with him sophomore year, and every day I'd think of something to talk to him about at the end of class, something where he would be the focus of attention and he could answer my questions and feel all special and important. Didn't take long for the rumors of his crush to start. ;)
Grace got her hooks into Crushy Boy by joining his parkour group. And then breaking her foot 15 minutes into her first session, but that part's not absolutely necessary. Although John added "It did seem to really get the hooks in, though." ;)
Essentially, that focus you speak of - it's your best tool. Use it well, and any single unattached guy you want will fall at your feet.
If I hadn't met John in college - then I'd probably be looking to meet people at bookstores, or the library, or I'd check out local groups on Meetup - there's a Geek club here that meets through Meetup, and they play trivia and have a gala ball once a year and go to movies and plays and things like that. There's also a writers group on there. And you can actually use online dating services to find local friends - just make it clear in your profile that you're only looking for friends, or if you want you could say you're looking for dates and friends.
It's tough, and thus far after nearly 32 years - the isolation never goes away. I don't know how many times I've found a new community on the internet, and I've thought "My people! I've found them!" and then after a week or two (or months to a year, in some extreme cases), the shine wore off and I saw that no, there's that immense yawning chasm here too.
*hugs* There's hope. There is. Hey, if nothing else, maybe you'll find a job down here! :) But nah - you're attached to your family there, I know.
If it helps at all - I understand. *hugs*
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Date: 2012-12-08 05:54 am (UTC)Goodness no, you know about the people who decided that I should orbit around them. It never did end well.
I'm apparently the nostalgia girl, though - everyone likes me when we've all moved apart and they don't actually have to deal with me, day by day, in a setting where other people would be watching. :/ Of course, that's been mostly those from high school so far, and everyone knows what a mess that place is.
As far as the Christmas thing goes I show up for the people I know and ignore everything else. *Shrugs.* Got me through high school, you know. Turns out that I still need people though, you know, a good book counts as a person for a while, at least.
Asexual until proven otherwise. *Shrugs* It's probably just because everyone I know is so young and dates so fast that it feels like I'm never going to meet anyone who is willing to stick around for the kind of time that bond would take. (Could also be the existential alienation from half of the people I knew in high school being in either really serious relationships, or married with babies. Or some of the uni people being all paired up and turtledove-y.)
Part of the problem might also be that whenever I get around to being friends with a guy, one of my friends is already dating him. X/ I tried going out with a guy I didn't know too well and that didn't work at all, because he assumed flirting meant "Yeah, go ahead and make a move." Now that I'm not a freshman anymore, I've realized from just knowing him around campus, I would have gotten bored with him really, really quick. We had stuff in common initially but that was all he had - surface thoughts. (Didn't help that he had automatically gotten clumped up with all the other theater kids - I would have been the outsider anyway if I'd ended up his girlfriend and part of their group.)
Summary: I'm really good at fishing for friends, horrible at figuring out who is really good for me, at least until after they've been around for so long that they aren't thinking about me anymore. I guess maybe part of it is I'm nervous, the other part is that despite living on a dry campus, there's a lot of party-focused people here and by the time I feel really safe and happy around a guy they've ceased to register the fact that I'm a girl, or they're attached elsewhere. (Averaging a couple of years between crushes will do that too, I guess.)
Yeah, somehow I don't think breaking her foot was really necessary, but at least they've got a funny story to tell now. :)
Continued
Date: 2012-12-08 08:51 pm (UTC)I mean, it was kind of nice, just showing up and getting stuff done and being forum favorite (The other mods have shorter fuses. Plus, I'd defuse flame and post wars with intentionally stupid puns,) but it's gotten to the point where the only really dedicated people are working on parts of the game that I don't much care about, like real time military strategy, and the programmers lost me a little past randomly generating terrain. Plus, it's an environment a lot like school, and that got stressful after a while. Turned out, though, that I was only the forum favorite because I was 1) the admin's big sis, 2) one of the oldest (age-wise) members and one of the only girls, and 3) the only person majoring in a lot of critical subjects.
Guess I've gotta take things as they come, though. Coincidences happen, and I'll probably be in a better shape to deal with people in real life next semester, or even next year. I still have no idea where I'm going after college, but supposedly there are jobs everywhere in Environmental Science. :)