Feeling utterly depressed today..........

Post Reply New Topic

There is a deep paradoxical connection between a former friend and my social struggles. My mind is depressed today and I am unsure of how to cope with this.

There is an ex-friend that keeps ruminating in my head. Last night, I had a disturbing dream where she sent me an e-mail that said, "I'm sorry for hurting you the way I did. Yada yada yada......." I have neither seen nor talked to this person in 1 1/2 years. She haunts my memory like a piranha continuously digesting remnants of a fish. I still think of her everyday even 1 1/2 years after she dissolved our friendship. She was the only person who made an effort to befriend me without trying to use me. She did stuff for me that no one else would. However, in the end it was all a sham. She said she knew she was being selfish by letting me go. I've tried erasing her memory from my brain but I can't.

I just recently moved to Ningbo, China on April 2nd. I have long desired to travel the world, witness other cultures instead of reading about them in books, and hopefully experience things that most people would only dream of. I work in an office teaching English with 7 other foreigners and 7-9 Chinese teaching assistants. I live with 2 other people who are nice and cordial to my face. Realistically, I like my living situation and where I am right now.

However, the waters in my mind are in a murky state. I have tried to interact with the others and feel utterly isolated. Everyone is nice to me but I feel completely alone.

Hiking at Ci Mountain last week -----> Everyone was invited except for me.
Picnic/Paddleboat at Moon Lake yesterday ----> Everyone was invited except me.

Even at "The Londoner" pub on Sunday evening, I felt unwanted. I went there after finding out that the pub would have an all you can eat for free (seriously, who would pass that up) from 7-8 in celebration of Easter. I talked to several people but spent most of the 2 hours I was there listening to the live music by myself although the owner combined 4 tables into one. One of the teachers I talked to for about 10 minutes made a convenient excuse to go over to another table and talk to her friends. I had to go after two hours because I felt utterly miserable.

Now today I wake up and have no energy to do anything. I just want to curl up and go to sleep. I dread hearing everyone in the office talk about how they did this or that last night. I feel that I am missing out on what would be fun life experiences because I am always alone. I just wanted to cry this morning. In fact, I really want to cry right now but my two other roommates are in their rooms and they would be able to hear me. I've always been a loner but this is different because I don't have my parents around. I've always been able to at least talk to them.

Is there anything I can do to get my "ex-friend" out of my brain? Yes, that would be by making other friends. However, that is not something I can do. I can speak Chinese but not enough to hold down a conversation with a local. Even in my native tongue, I struggle mightily making conversations because of my AS. Have you lived in a foreign environment similar to mine? How did you cope?

It is arduous knowing that you cannot make friends regardless of what you do.

Hang in there. Things change with a little time. Just keep smiling and being friendly. People like to have fun and tend to avoid anyone who is bringing them down. I work to be nice to people.

That said, I understand what you are saying. It sounds so familiar. I am often confused when people get bored with the things that I am saying to them. Sometimes they will excuse themselves just like you experienced. I am working on trimming down my long winded points and listening a little more. If I talk too much the other person doesn't get to share what's on their mind.

My mind sometimes get stuck on obsessing about something. It seems like you really have to push that out with a different or new hobby or interest. You need to give your mind something else to think about. Maybe you can use something else that you like to redirect your thoughts or find a new interest. Do you like photography? You could work on memorializing your new surroundings by taking lots of photos. Maybe try to enjoy the change of scenery.

Again, try to stay positive and up-beat. People like that. They run away from sadness or negativity. You said that they are nice to you. Try to focus on that niceness and build on it.

Both are big deals. Someone who you thought was a friend, acted like a friend, and maybe even was a friend in some regards, then this pounce at the end. Can't help reviewing it wondering if they were earlier signs.

Then the job abroad, and the potential friendship pool of seven other people you can talk with. And that is just flat-out sh*tty behavior not to invite you on the hike and other event that everyone else was going on, no other way to put it. It's the opposite of good host behavior that people should be practicing. And same for the club, music venue, leaving you alone for two hours. No one seems to be interested in team building and the low-key leadership that pull people in and do positive events. About eight years ago, I took a job in a New England state, more lonely there than where I grew up, in part because it was a dream coming true but it's not working out.

Okay, one option, you can be that low-key leader, ask people if they'd be interested in event A or B, then look into the logistics, then invite everyone in the group.

You can view it as a success, just time to move onto the next adventure. The beginning of summer might be time for a natural break, or the end of summer and line up some classes for Fall, grad school (and I know, when one is feeling low hard to get the energy to do anything). And just use the face-saving statement of 'family responsibilities' 'family situation' 'cannot say more than that,' yes, it is a lie, but it's a face-saving lie on both sides, and the way they're been treating you, yes, I think it's justified, even putting that to the side, enough of a white lie that I think it's okay. Again, majorly uncool to invite everyone but one person. No one is acting the role of a leader, we're all going to make it, we all have things to contribute. <--That would be a person being a positive leader. Instead, it seems more like high school, these little petty games of social hierarchy and being 'popular.' I'm assuming that's a large part of the motive on the part of these other people. In any case, it is not a healthy situation. So, you leave early, you book it as an experience and as largely a success.

And it sounds like you have a pretty good relationship with your parents. Maybe start telling them some of this. 'Not yet working out,' may be both a positive and realistic way to approach it.

You're seeing stuff but you don't have anyone to share it with (just like me in New England).

Okay, as far as getting that former friend out of your head, you may have heard of zen meditation and "monkey mind" and the "chattering monkey." If one tries to push the thought out, paradoxically, that often keeps the thought in one's mind longer. So, you just let the thought float where it will, observing it almost with detachment as it were, confidently that eventually in it's own good time it will float out.

I like reading, writing, studying in semi-public areas where they're are people around and I feel safe, but I can still do my own thing. Plus, I like long walks, like an hour and a half. So, one method, I give myself permission to write 0, 1, 2, or 3 sentences about something that bothers me. When I was studying taxes, I would do this as I studied keeping a single piece of paper face down. For example, the single sentence might be 'I wish she had told me earlier that I was high maintenance.' And that's it. That is enough for that observation. So, what I'm doing, something I'm ruminating, I'm giving myself permission to write it on one occasion. And thus, it's one paper and in a summarized form I kind of like, and then I don't 'need' to remember it as much.

And depending on how big Ningbo is, might there be an ex-pat community which could provide a bigger social pool? Or, maybe sports groups where it wouldn't matter so much how well the Chinese speak English or how well you speak Chinese?

How about a friend that tells you that "friends" only email once a week if that. We were emailing every day and I got too friendly and scared him again, I guess. I'm about to give up.
I sent an email apologizing but he'd already said if I emailed him this week he'd delete any emails without reading them. If this is "friendship" I don't get it. I know he doesn't have a lot
of friends but I don't like being told I can only see him certain times or talk to him certain times or get blocked on his facebook, etc. It's really getting to me because I really like him but I'm getting tired of being treated this way... all because he found out I like him.

Thanks for the feedback everyone.

In regards to several points people shared, I must say that things are working out from a job perspective. I really like what I do, and am living more comfortably here than I ever have anywhere else. I will not say I am rich, but I will be able to save half of my salary and still live comfortably.

I will just have to deal with the social crap from my workmates. I had to deal with that in the States & I can deal with it here. 80% of the time I feel fine, but then there's the other 20% of the time where I long for a friend. Just one friend. Yesterday, I found myself in the 20% range. Several guys played basketball together, then went to a bar (not sure which one) to play trivia last night. I guess I shouldn't care anymore what anyone does since I"ll never be part of the group. Yet I say that and I....................I don't know.

I guess if there was one person in this world outside of my parents that liked me for who I am, I'd be happy.

Martin Luther King, Jr. had a dream stating, "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character." I also have a dream. I have a dream that four little Asperigans will live in a world where they will not be judged by their social differences, but by the content of their character.

I teach EFL in Taiwan so I think I can relate to your isolation more than most people here.

The thing about traveling abroad is, I think, that there's an expectation that things will be different. I know that I thought they would be. I thought that by coming here I'd be able to have all the social relationships I couldn't before. I did have friends at home, people like me who were a bit on the outskirts of society, and I even got married. After university, however, even though I still had all my old friends, I found that I couldn't really make any new ones. I didn't know why I couldn't have friends at work, I just couldn't. By moving countries I suppose I kind of thought that I would fall into a new group of people, be accepted by them, and have a new me in my life.

It didn't work out that way because people who want to travel put far too much emphasis on the whole 'it's a brand new different culture' side of things. It is. It's wonderful, brilliant, scary, and exciting. BUT, people forget that when they go to that new place, they're still going to be the person they were before. Even worse, the people they're most likely to fall in with is people from home; the kind of people they tried to get away from. The kind of people who excluded them, made them feel different, and even bullied them at times. Those people continue to form their cliques, they continue to have a mysterious ability to know when to call each other, when to invite each other out, and when to strike up conversations with strangers. And, for people like us, we still find ourselves, mysteriously, on the outside of all of that. We don't know why, we just are.

It's wrong of your colleagues in your school to treat you the way they have. Unforgivable, I would say. They all know what it's like to be the newbie off the plane who doesn't know how to do anything. They too have had those moments of depression that come from being so far from home. And they're grown-ups who, presumably, teach their students not to be cruel to their friends. I know that's what I teach my little ones. I always tell them they should help each other.

My advice to you with your school is that you should finish your contract and then find a new school. If your area in China is anything like mine in Taiwan, then buxibans are everywhere and finding a job is never realistically going to take longer than a week. Do your research, of course, and don't go for schools that have been blackballed by other foreigners. When you do find a new school, maybe try being a bit more active in arranging activities.

With me and my schools, I get along fine with my colleagues. I can talk to them about school stuff or give advice about where to eat etc because I've been here for longer than them. Outside school, I don't really see other people much. A lot less now, actually, than I used to. I'm just so tired of making the effort or trying not to be me when I go out. It's easier to stay at home and sleep until it's time to go to work again.

I have a theory that only 1 out of 9 groups really work out. And this can be any group, kayaking, hiking, board games, astronomy. And I actually consider it to be an optimistic theory, both because it explains some of my past experiences and because it kind of gives me a future method of light-touching a variety of groups. And I also tell myself, engagement not conformity. Some of it is that people are busy, some of it is that the group doesn’t really meet often enough to get some traction going, and some of it is that I’m labeled as ‘weird,’ and people happen to be in more of a hierarchical mode or perhaps a growth consolidation phrase, and aren’t interested in meeting new and interesting people. Their loss. (I have a nasal voice, and tend to talk about intellectual topics and can find myself jumping relationship levels. Even more so when I was studying philosophy.)

A person can figure the over-under of how many groups I need to join to give myself a 50-50 chance of one or more working out (I can do this a poker player, which I recommend for social skills, but not as an attempt to make money), and it’s not 4.5 groups, it’s actually somewhat greater than that. I am open to appreciating people, might happen, might not. I am open to reciprocating in a conversation or outing, in smaller steps at first, then later on in both small and medium steps of ping-ponging back and forth. But at first, a little “dancing behind the beat," being a little low-key, and of under-doing.

I can also organize activities and invite people. A little bit more high risk, putting myself more on the line, not always is going to work out esp if I’m a person who is already negatively labeled.

Work tends to be an environment where people are more hierarchical. And I guess I want to side-step a situation where I’m putting all of my eggs into the work basket.

Hope things are going better for you in China. Sometimes just out of good luck if nothing else a person can just get on a positive roll. Take care. And please drop us a line whenever you like entirely on your own schedule.

I had this so called friend who when I told her about my Dad having cancer and my Nephew having Juvienile huntingtons Disease all she said was your familys shrinking I call her my ex friend now I won't answer any phone calls from her because of what she said.