Feel like I've been living a lie

Post Reply New Topic

And it's just now catching up to me.

I am a college sophomore. Shortly after beginning high school I became infatuated with a girl that I have hardly spoken to, and when I did I became strangely cold or jocular, leaving me stunned and crushed. Throughout high school I, somewhat wittingly, decided that my life would be driven by the thought of seeing this girl around school. My social life and even my school work, which I have always dutifully completed and excelled in, became structured to "just get by" day by day, me being perfectly content to get a glimpse of this girl every day or so. Now, years later, I am home again. I get irritated by most of my friends, and sometimes even what I am doing with them in the first place, even though our ties go back before high school. Yet, at the same time, they are really all I have apart from my family, and I love them. I have (next to) no one at college, and often find myself looking forward to returning back home, even though I know inside that being there will only bring a deeper feeling of emptiness. I still see the girl around my home city sometimes during the holidays, but she goes to school so far away that I feel like it is not realistic to expect to be able to tell her how I feel and how much I love(d ???) her, because I don't see how I could do this to help me get on with my life when I could never be with her. I know I will never forget her, I could never want to forget her. I just want advice on how to get on with my life. I am many times more interested in a rather serious girlfriend relationship in college than making friends, but at the same time I realize that it is probably easier to meet and win over girls when they can see that you don't spend the majority of your time alone and I also realize that I may not even have an idea of what post-puberty/adult friendship even means.

I have never really felt suicidal, but I often dream of running away and starting anew, even if I have no degree or income at first. The only thing is that my family are important to me and each new day I feel like the grass is less and less greener on the other side.

I realize this is all very superfluous, but the main thing I wanted to do was get this all out of my head. I would be very grateful to receive any advice on how to start living

The love of you for your family and your family for you is a precious thing.
I moved every 18 months to three years since I was 17, because what ever I could put together would all start to unravel about that time. Then I would go on to the next place and start all over again. Men I loved came and men I loved went and I was joyous while they were there and grief stricken when they were gone, but I kept on just being me.

I got my college degree exactly twenty years after I graduated from high school, so getting it later is definately a doable thing, but if I had had a family that was important to me, I would have stayed around and had a different life.

Merle

Your situation reminds me of my own in some ways. I too am a college sophomore, have become obsessive (yet shy) about a girl at school, and am trying to figure out where it's all going. Do you kind of feel like your life is idling? Like you don't know what exactly you're doing, or have any focused ambition, and you're just sort of biding time until something comes along?

I don't have this stuff resolved for myself, so I can't offer you much in the way of my own advice. But I have a friend who, in the past couple years, has really improved himself in a lot of ways, more socially confident and clear-headed. I can at least pass along something he told me.

Fear is your first greatest enemy. Every day you have to conquer fear, and every day you're going to wake up and fear will be there again, and you'll have to conquer it again. This monster revives itself every day. You're always going to run into situations that make you feel anxious, and you'll always have to overcome fear. "Feel the fear, and do it anyway." Like ripping a bandaid off, just get it over with. It'll be worth it. It's better than the regret you may come to feel if you don't do it.

Your second enemy is laziness. It goes hand in hand with fear, and like fear, it revives every morning. Fear and laziness are the two biggest forces holding you back from doing constructive things. Both can atrophy and eat up your (social) life.

I hope this 2 AM not-altogether-sober message provides you with some kind of useful insight.

Courage to ya

Thanks for your replies guys and girls, they really did provide me w/ a little relief

Yes, very much so, I often even feel like I am in some sort of limbo or even purgatory.

Thanks for sharing your friend's lesson, it's spot on, really I don't have the words. And good luck to you.

Thanks again, both of you.

If it isn't someone you know very well, isn't it just that you are attracted to her? Look wise.
That is, if you havnt talked so much to her.

Last edited by Tias on 02 Jan 2009, 11:13 pm, edited 1 time in total.

My impression is that your feeling of stagnation is tied to your fixation on this girl. I know it's not easy to shake this kind of obsession but you will probably have to emerge from it in order to move on. Even if the obsession is lingering it can be powerful enough to be life-altering. Have you consciously tried to rid yourself of it?

Oh yes, but I also like the way she carries herself, etc. etc. I know it's silly.



Yes... but maybe (or obviously) I haven't sufficiently tried. It's just that if I know she's around, like at a gathering, she will constantly be at the back of my mind. And then after that she's back in my head. It doesn't help that I can pretty well guess when I'll see her (creepy, I know, all I ever do is worry about being creepy). Maybe I should avoid these gatherings, which might mean having to come up with a ridiculous excuse for my friends (I guess you can see now that I don't feel comfortable expressing this situation to them). I just feel like if I avoid these situations, the way my life is now (as in I have nothing to fall back on apart from my old friends) I would constantly think of this girl during the time I thought I might have encountered her. I am envious of my friends who can afford to drift away from the old high school group, even when we are out of school, because of all the people they met in college.

I don't think about this girl much at school. I am still attracted to other girls, but it is very depressing when the feeling is never near as strong. To be honest I hoped that I could just suppress what I had felt for this girl and have the same thing happen again with another girl, as my school is supposed to be full of beautiful girls (gee I feel like a stupid bastard looking at those words I just wrote). The only time I really think of her is if I am feeling completely melancholy (which, I guess due to my biology, isn't the majority of the time).