Hollow Relationships

I wanted to wait until I was less emotional to post this, but really just needed to vent. I have DPD (self-diagnosed, at least) and I'm having so much trouble not going completely insane. Days barely register anymore as anything but a series of hazy, meaningless shapes, and everything I have to do, my responses and interactions with people, are even more meaningless, just trials and hoops I can barely make sense of, let alone benefit from or be happy about. It's totally frightening. I can barely bother to expend the energy to act normally in social settings. My mental issues have left me completely drained and evacuated, if it's possible to become any more so.

I feel like a sociopath who just so happens to cry and feel remorse all the time.

Most of all, I think I want other people to know. It's so damn painful knowing people think I'm ditzy and spacey and never serious about anything - they tell me so both in jest and gently in seriousness all the time, but it's no secret to me that I'm being "laughed about" or possibly "wondered about" for my novelty value. People feel the need to protect me like a child because I'm "different" or "might get taken advantage of" (I also have mild Asperger's.), when in reality I just don't have the same interests or goals as everyone else. IT MAKES ME FEEL LIKE ALL MY FRIENDSHIPS ARE VOID. Because they don't think of me as an equal, they think of me as a little "off" or "touched" and I'm beginning to see patterns in how I am accordingly treated. I don't know how I didn't see them before. My behavior is often called "cute" or "funny" but in a clearly condescending way. They ask me if I remembered to do this or that, if I "really understand or I'm just pretending to," if I would be able to live on my own (I don't know, and my DPD makes it really hard for me to care). When I confront people about "what they really mean" when they call me different or odd, they balk and deflect and get embarrassed, which is even more annoying. My imagination leads me to assume the worst, of course, that they consider me too weird/messed up/broken/handicapped to have a lasting or meaningful friendship with.

Being continually treated like I'm stupid by people who don't know my circumstances is getting absolutely unbearable, even though it's obviously my conscious choice not to tell them. It literally feels like a BETRAYAL OF TRUST, because my expectation of a friendship is a mutual bond where people befriend you because they like you, not because they're worried about you. I recently found out that one of my best friends mostly wanted to be college roommates with me so she could keep an eye out for me, and while I know I should hypothetically be grateful, I feel deceived, like our relationship was a sham. How many more of my close personal relationships am I going to learn were ruined or never existed in a way meaningful to me in the first place because of my DPD (or Asperger's).

I'm just so tired of people not knowing I'm always in my own little world for a reason, and that I'm not capable of being serious. I just want to shout, "I have a disorder that makes me disconnected from reality and I have to deal with feeling like everything is a horrific illusion every second of my life, when it hasn't reduced me to being on auto-pilot." That's why I'm so different, neutral, passive, apathetic, "nice." Because I neurologically cannot be bothered to have inflamed opinions, feel lasting ambition or passion, or truly care about or connect with someone the way I desire.

Maybe people do need to know. I guess what prompted all this was being told online by a close friend whom I trust implicitly and have for years that he doesn't know what to do with our friendship. He feels like he can't truly talk to me because I'm never serious, and that all the discussions I do initiate turn into hollow platitudes or pissing contests. I know he didn't mean anything by it except to try and call attention to the issue and hopefully steer the relationship in a better, more genuine direction, but the subtextual sense of "you've made me feel like we were never really friends," as a reversal of what I usually feel, really got to me. It got me thinking about and blaming myself for all my other relationships that seem or seemed disingenuous. The common factor is me, after all. But I just want to experience love, friendship, happiness, in a way not clouded by irony and a sort of "hyper-self-aware" attitudes that mucks "living in the now" up entirely.

Well, I've exhausted myself and spun around in enough circles for now. Thanks for allowing me my little rant.

I have to say it was really refreshing to read your post.

Thanks for opening up and sharing some very raw and intimate feelings...

"

Hecaebe wrote:(I also have mild Asperger's.), when in reality I just don't have the same interests or goals as everyone else. IT MAKES ME FEEL LIKE ALL MY FRIENDSHIPS ARE VOID.

I feel the exact same... Really.

Hecaebe wrote: I just want to experience love, friendship, happiness, in a way not clouded by irony and a sort of "hyper-self-aware" attitudes that mucks "living in the now" up entirely.

Ditto!

I don't mean to preach but I really recommend you reach out to a mental health professional... I went to see a psychiatrist last week who used the term "depersonalization" to identify/summarize the root cause for my current psychological problems, he prescribed some medication which I hope will help. I'll be going back to him next week to continue therapy as I just want to be normal/healthy too... if it helps, I'll keep you posted and let you know what works.