Generally on this board, I'd like to think I give out a lot of advice and am very upbeat. I'm not always like that in real life, lately I've been having meltdowns almost daily over really ridiculous things. I think I've sold that somewhat, a lot was like, concretely medical. I found out I was deficient in B vitamins, and now that I've started taking a B vitamin supplement, I'm better able to cope. IE, I won't punch a wall if I get mad at something. Anyway, I'm not one to really, share my feelings with words with people very much. From high school on, I basically had to turn my feelings off, as nobody cared what I felt, so why should I? So I ran without feelings for the longest time, I didn't get very happy, nor very sad. My life was tough back then, very tough, full of lots of really serious hardship I don't want to totally get into right now on here. But now that my life is easier, and better in almost every way, I find it harder now, as my feelings are back on. Anyway, I'm typing this in a fairly sober state, ie, I'm not too emotionally out of control, so I hope I don't type anything dumb or really emo. Generally I'm reluctant to vent, as people can misinterpret my venting as something I don't want it to be, I've gotten locked in a hospital for that reason, which put the nail in the coffin for my feelings for a long time. But now I feel like I've collected it all and can type it in a reasonable manner. I don't really know what people on here can really do for me, I mean generally we're all on here because we feel like we're doing sh***y, right? And uh, for the record, as usual, I'm diagnosed NVLD, so it "works" like Aspergers, but after reading on here, while some people are similar to me, it seems most people here are drastically different from me, and different from my friends (surprisingly I got 2 friends DXed NVLD, one I met and didn't know had NVLD until I told him about my diagnosis) with NVLD. I don't know, I'm good at theoretically intellectually working out problems, too, I don't know if anyone else would come up with anything better than I can for myself, either. But uh, yeah, let's begin I guess.
Today, what sorta triggered this, I guess. I had church. This is a big issue in itself. What happened at church wasn't a big deal, but it was a socially awkward kind of thing. What happened was, I didn't go to a funeral/memorial service for a member's father. I've only been going for like a month to this church, and only know a few people, and didn't know the guy, or his father. So I didn't go. I felt kinda awkward for that, like going would be the "proper" thing to do, but I don't know what to like, say, at all, you know? I don't know how to comfort people when someone's died. I can basically be like "that sucks" and that's all. My empathy works different I guess. I wouldn't want people reminding me someone's dead all the time and going "sorry for your loss" and bringing it all back up. Also, for selfish reasoning of mine, I wasn't told in advance of the memorial thing after Vespers, and I was planning to go skating tonight, which I did, and skating didn't turn out very good. So I guess I was wrong in what I did. That, and they were doing a coat drive, and someone wanted to give me a coat. I have a feeling I made someone mad by refusing the coat someone wanted to give me, as I usually go there with my little windbreaker I wear when skating. I didn't like, "get" that they really wanted me to have the coat and all that. I just thought it was meant for like, poorer people, you know? So I have a feeling I've like, pissed people off inadvertently there by doing that. I guess it'll blow over, in time, and the good thing about my church is, it's an Orthodox church, I'm not Orthodox yet, though. But, what I like is basically, the Divine Liturgy service is completely separate/devoid of socializing with people. And it's cool if you just go to the DL and just leave after. That, and there's more older people, who I tend to get along with better. But uh, yeah, so that small thing happened. Hopefully tomorrow morning isn't bad.
Anyway, my main "root" of a lot of the reason I felt sad or lonely or whatever tonight. I got back into Christianity during the, uh, troubles, of my life. I was raised in an Independent Fundamental Baptist Church. Not too many kids are Christian after being raised in those... KJV only, no rock music, in the elementary school, your hair had to be like 1cm away from your eyebrows or you'd get sent home. Crazy stuff. So after school refusal over the craziness of everything there in 6th grade, I basically went apostate for 5-7 years, I was pretty much agnostic during that time.
But, I started going back to church, with my friend at his nondenominational church. It seemed pretty cool, I guess. Everyone got to wear whatever clothes they wanted, they really stressed like, inner sanctity rather than outer sanctity. Basically, the church seemed like, finally, a place to "belong" the members seemed very loving, and the church was all about getting it's members to include eachother and stuff, and basically be friendly. Now, I know this is basically a cult tactic, called "lovebombing" but you know, it seemed really neat at the time to me. Finally to have a group, of pretty "cool" people no less, to be apart of. But, trouble started basically with the youth pastor. He'd basically pick on me for my "aspie" traits, and call me weird and basically was pretty nasty to me. I don't know if he was intentional in it or not. Basically, to put it shortly, the church was less a church, and more a social club. Christian social club, but still a social club. For a while, in said group, I was very extroverty. I was a pretty cool dude, more or less. I had my NVLD diagnosis at that time, but I was all like "lol all psychology is BS" and just ignored the DX entirely. So I just sorta...went for it. I was an extrovert, but looking back, I was totally idiotic about it. And it caught up to me, and I ended up sorta crashing from it all, basically being forced to be an extrovert, in the name of it being the only way to be a good Christian who's "actively loving" or whatever. I guess to an extent, I'm naturally extroverted, but I'm an idiot socially, too. I guess if I had my way, I'd talk to everyone in a room about like....eurobeat for hours on end.
But, to top it off, I met a girl there. I liked/loved/whatever that stupid emotion is quite a bit. She's, as I learned the term now, basically the most "NT" person I know. Like, severely NT. I thought it was awesome. She was like the complete opposite of me. Anyway, I liked her, and I don't know, she might have liked me, but I was pretty much too scared to ask her out. During that time, was during my "troubles" and I figured I'd drag her down with me, and I'd be a bad person if I did that. Anyway, she got a boyfriend, and then got married to him. After that, total crash.
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If I were to summarize my post without giving a history like I did, uhm, it's a tough situation, as it's religiously influenced. My Orthodox priest said it was a good idea for me to not be in that community anymore, simply because the girl would be a distraction. But, it's more than that. I had the taste of being, as it's called here, an "NT" in my grasp.
Tonight, what really triggered my sadness, was I was skating. Usually skating is really great. I can fill my mind up with 3 turn diagrams and technical skating stuff, and it's always the same like 5-6 old people at the rink on weekdays. Today was a week before Christmas, so the rink was packed with people. I saw all these people. Only a few went ice skating alone. I go alone everyday. I like ice skating a lot. Everyone was in groups, or was a couple. Probably about 60 people, all having fun with their friends, or worse, with their girlfriends. The actual skating was crap, too, btw, due to all the people who didn't know how to skate. But at the rink, one of the girls, a figure skater (who's leaps and bounds better than me) I really vaguely was acquainted with (as in I've said like 5-10 sentences to her in my entire life) was working tonight as a moderator. I guess I vaguely "like" her, but honestly I don't know her enough to make a judgement one way or the other. The only thing about her, she reminds me greatly of the girl I liked who got married. So, it was a double whammy of sadness I guess.
Now, going with the thread title, I have issues talking with girls. Sorta. I can approach girls, but usually I lapse into talking about eurobeat or something inane like that. I think what scares me most, is a relationship, as a relationship is an exchange of feelings, something I'm very terrible at, which is why I wrote like at least half a dozen paragraphs describing them. If it were just down to me being a jackass and screwing random women, I'd be awesome at it. I look decent, I'm skilled at lots of stuff, etc. However, being Christian, I can't do that, and really, it's not a good sustainable lifestyle choice either way. I think the big problem is exchange of feelings, I'm mostly clueless of my own, and more clueless of what to do with them, so I have no idea what to do with other people's feelings.
And this is to the second part of my thread title. Should I just accept it all and just be a hermit of sorts? Be one of those 50 year old guys with a massive collection of cars and just give up on people? It's weird, as I've seen both sides of the grass. I know it's not greener on the "NT" side, as I've been on that side. I've been through the stage of "hanging out" with people almost every night, having lots of "friends" and it didn't end up working. Now, it's really odd, as my life is devoted to random hobbies, but my hobbies are sorta "cool" but they're solitary. Like it's pretty rare for me to even make the time to sit down and play a video game or watch a movie nowadays. One of my friends said all my hobbies involve the real world, haha. So I'm not "nerdy" anymore either, though I am, it's quite a paradox.
Basically, I just feel like I'm becoming self centered, maybe not in the traditional sense, but still to some degree. I just do everything I do alone, I hate relying on others. I can't figure out when people like me or dislike me 90% of the time, so now I've just taken the precautions of just assuming almost everyone dislikes me/thinks I'm weird, and I especially apply this to girls, and it's mostly just due to historical precedent I guess. There's a big part of me who wants to help people, be appreciated by them, all that sorta stuff, but it's cancelled out, well, by my NVLD it seems. So the question is, do I just withdraw? Just assume the world doesn't like me, and call it quits? Continue my life the way I am now, just specifically avoiding becoming close with people?
Religiously, I guess my old church, was almost like, anti-monasticism/ascetism. My youth pastor would basically disrespect those sort of things, because they weren't involved with people (as you can see, this church would definitely want you to have an E in your MTBI type.) On the other hand, Orthodoxy actually respects living life as a hermit or a monk away from the world's influence, and in fact, most of the saints are monastics or hermits. In a way, it's competing spiritual ideas in my mind, too. Be a boring Orthodox person with his boring Divine Liturgy that's been the same since like AD 700, or be a hip cool nondenominational cool kid youth who listens to Christian rock and has like 5 piercings and tattoos, and eventually becomes a youth pastor who like rides a motorcycle to church or something? It's almost like one Christian group is an "NT" group and one is an "Aspie" group.
So yeah, I don't even really know entirely the point of this post. I'm just sorta confused. Confused of what I should pursue, and why. Confused of what my capabilities even are. Basically, is it wise to just stay the way I am now, and just grow into an adult wrapped up in my "stuff" and just slowly cutting myself off from the world to live in my own world instead? Just use all my hobbies to fill the void left by social interaction and girlfriends, and eventually, a wife and kids?
And I should have put better topic sentences and had my paragraphs arranged better too. Sorry for making you read all this, it's probably stupid. Hopefully it doesn't make me look stupid. Well, good night and God bless everyone who's reading this.
18 Dec 2011, 2:47 am
