Smacster wrote:I find it curious that it's been 6 years since you graduated and this is still what plagues you. Have you had any relationships since HS?
I find it curious, too. But a lot of people here are haunted by events and circumstances going back decades. Every time I hear or read about that school or people associated with it, I feel a bad mixture of anger, jealousy, and regret. Just this morning I saw a story from the local paper about some famous alum visiting and I got that same twinge. I know that's messed up. When I first went to college it seemed foreign to me that anyone could miss high school. I hated everything about high school. I thought college would be better, and socially it was much better.
I did make friends in college. Even my roommate was amazing. She was so nice and patient with my shyness. However, I would go home almost every weekend so I was often out of the loop. My first year at college was great socially and academically. The second year, I started having trouble with paper anxiety. I was an English major at an overall writing-intensive school, so that wasn't good at all. I think the counselors thought I was making it all up, but I wasn't. I was truly blocked, and I didn't have the guts to ask my teachers for help, which in hindsight probably would have taken care of the problem. My adviser gave me the option of taking a leave of absence when I started having the same trouble the next quarter. Taking that leave was probably the biggest mistake of my entire life. I didn't do anything productive during my time off because I had convinced myself I would fail at anything I tried. I stopped returning my friends' phone calls and emails because I was so ashamed of myself. When I came back a year and a half later, they put me in a new dorm where I didn't know anyone and where people were actively cliquey and unfriendly despite my best efforts. I would eat at my old dining hall with the people from my old dorm but I felt like an outsider. People who didn't know me would ask me why I had taken time off and/or what I had done during that time and I would just want to die. The people I had come in with were getting ready to graduate. The writer's block came back with me, too. After that quarter I asked to take another leave and though I planned on returning to graduate for a long time, now I don't want to. I stopped answering phone calls and emails from those friends again until they stopped, because they always wanted to know what I was up to and I never had anything to say. I don't like to hear anything about that school anymore either. It was just this year that I could visit that neighborhood without wanting to cry.
This year is my third and final year at community college. I conquered my academic writers block. Socially it has been a lot harder because everyone is either too young and stupid or too old and condescending. Academically I work hard to get straight A's so that I can feel the littlest bit of self-worth (bad thing to base one's self-worth on, I know). Last year I made a couple of friends who I am still friends with, but because I'm not on campus 24/7 like they seem to be, I miss out on a lot. It wasn't until I met them that I realized how intense my trust and intimacy issues had become. My brain is finally going through puberty ten years late, so I'm dealing with sexual frustration that seemed to come out of nowhere. I aged out of my father's insurance so it has been a struggle to get help, but I'm temporarily seeing someone for free through school.
What triggers me now are aspects of my relationships with my new friends. One of my new friends tells me I'm his best friend. I consider him my best friend, too, and I've been able to open up to him a lot. When he is upset about something, I listen to him and I'm supportive as I can be. When I am upset, he is kind of dismissive, though he doesn't mean to be. He doesn't know any better. I had a big crush on him for bad reasons--basically because he's the only person I've trusted in years, who happens to be male and can hold an intelligent conversation. I found out he doesn't see me as relationship material. That hurts more than it should, maybe because he's always talking about how lonely he is, how he wishes he had a girlfriend, blah blah blah. Anyway. Though he considers me his best friend, I'm usually the one who calls him. We don't do much together and I hardly ever see him at school. To be fair, he has a crazy busy schedule this semester. When I tell him that I'd like to see him and talk to him more (not that often because I don't want to be clingy and annoying), he doesn't get it. He says we run into each other all the time when we don't. He says we talk all the time when we don't--sometimes he literally confuses talking about me to other people with actually interacting with me. I interpret it as a repeat of the way my high school friends used to treat me (to be fair, I interpret everything through that warped lens) and it makes me ill. I hate myself for wanting him to be more than he is willing to be. I hate myself for needing anyone that much. He complains all the time about feeling lonely, but when I do the same he insinuates that it's all my own fault. Well tell me something I don't know, genius. He's a few years older so when he does that, it comes across as extremely condescending and dismissive. But I have to be careful about feeling angry or resentful because I know I'm very paranoid. Despite all this he's still the best, most reliable friend I have had since I was a child. That's pathetic.
I'm tired of only having acquaintances. I want a couple of real friends I can depend on and lean on, who are willing to make time to be with me. I don't understand why that is so much to ask. I wish I could know to what extent it's the people I'm around and to what extent it's me that's causing the problem. I have made the transition from being sad to being angry, but I'd rather be neither. I'm tired of constantly being disappointed by people I care about, and tired of starving for affection.
TL;DR: I have had relationships since high school, but I have found it nearly impossible to enjoy and/or maintain those relationships because I don't feel safe in them.
Enough about me, Smacster. How did you end up getting diagnosed?
But seriously, if someone destroyed facebook I would laugh and rejoice... until the next lemming magnet popped up to take its place.
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