Where do I start?

I'm different. Always have been. My brain just works differently, not in any immediately obvious way (read: I am not in fact on the spectrum), but I react, think, and feel differently to most people; and when your mind ticks a different tock people react to you differently, rarely ever positively. So pretty much everywhere I go, I don't fit, even when I wanted to.

After coming out of a long-term relationship that was going nowhere (something I was only staying in because the alternative was loneliness), I fell into a relationship with a friend, and after two years I discovered that I was the other man, and that was just the tip of the insanity iceberg. She was a pathalogical liar, she had invented every detail of the life she had told me about, and for the entire five years we had known each other she had lied to me every single day.

After I walked away, I decided to take some time for myself, and I stepped back and looked at everything and I realised that I've never had a relationship that didn't end up either one-sided or turn out to be exploitative in some way. The overwhelming majority of my friendships haven't been much different. I don't want it to be true, but I feel like the most charitable thing I can say is that people tolerate me, they don't necessarily like me. Certainly feels that way when I start so much of the conversations and the get-togethers. People don't often remember me. I'm not the sort of person people invite over on a whim. Even the majority of my immediate family deal with me as a matter of courtesy rather than any kind of fondness. I am well aware that I am imperfect, but that doesn't mean I don't try, and what I get back in turn. . .

People don't call up out of the blue with offers of fun times. I have a hard enough time with social stuff when I'm the one organising. I want to be the sort of person who others want around, because they're fun or funny and make them feel good about themselves, but clearly I'm not.

So maybe it's my fault. But what do I do? People talk about social skills like they're obvious things, but they aren't really. We like to think that it's simple: "Don't pull down your pants and crap on your host's dining table." We fill volumes over broad strokes but live and die by the tiniest details. Details that we take for granted, as though if you understand the obvious things everything else just comes naturally. It quickly becomes patronising, and I get to feeling like if I ever just relax and be myself then sooner or later I'm going to ruin everything. One word, one pause, a raised eyebrow, something and that's it.

I know this isn't entirely rational, and yet, I wouldn't call myself depressed. I am well aware that depression isn't all crying in bed and moping around in the same clothes for days on end. But it's more like the time I realised that my migraines weren't random they were due to the things I was eating. Maybe part of my brain is blowing things all out of proportion, doesn't mean I'm not a freak, doesn't mean it's not my fault, just means there has to be something I can do about it and I don't have to spend the rest of my life being alone. The two are not mutually exclusive, and even if I am willing to seek professional help, being counselled or medicated into being happy with how things are is not what I am after.

This all came crashing down a few weeks back when I was discussing some health problems in a group I had thought of as a safe space, the reaction I got made it clear that what I had been saying was not being explicitly understood, more parsed for keywords to respond to. Something that reminds me of too many other similar scenarios: people looking for what they want to see and then making up the details that reinforce their biases. Story of my life.

This is my third attempt to get this off my chest. Elsewhere, the previous two times I was perfunctorily banned in minutes, which has me starting to entertain the notion that I am in some way cursed. Not something I'm used to thinking, but if the shoe fits.

Fitting in and belonging somewhere is an important human need.
You haven't given cause to be banned here so keep coming back.
This site is sometimes the only place some of the users have to fit in........

I suppose the first question I'll ask is....Do you like yourself? You say you aren't depressed and that's fine, but do you like who you are?
If not, that's the first part of the equation to start "fixing."
Figure out who you are. Figure out what you like to do.
The most important thing is to not give up. Don't start the day negatively thinking it's all honeysuckle and it will always be honeysuckle. Find new hobbies, volunteer, start going to church if you are religious or find a new church, join clubs, start play a sport, go hiking.
Everyone can stand some improvement, so find some flaws and figure out what to do to make them a little better.

Oh and welcome to the forum

TheRealCallie said:

I suppose the first question I'll ask is....Do you like yourself?  You say you aren't depressed and that's fine, but do you like who you are?  
If not, that's the first part of the equation to start "fixing."  
Figure out who you are.  Figure out what you like to do.  
The most important thing is to not give up.  Don't start the day negatively thinking it's all honeysuckle and it will always be honeysuckle.  Find new hobbies, volunteer, start going to church if you are religious or find a new church, join clubs, start play a sport, go hiking.  
Everyone can stand some improvement, so find some flaws and figure out what to do to make them a little better.

Oh and welcome to the forum

Click to expand...

I was more thinking of where to start with the story that is my life. Between the bad pulp novel that has become my love life (I haven't actually seen Harry Dresden turn up, but if my ex ever showed up and tried to give me an old Roman coin I would not be surprised), the first act of a saturday afternoon hallmark movie that is my familial relationships, and the flaming wreckage of a John Hughes 'rite de passage' that was once my dreams, it's a highly convolluted mess of interconnections. I did decide to pare down the exposition in the introduction, because too much too soon is not a good thing and overloading on information is a funtime activity preference that I share with very few people.

But, Motion-wise: I'm doing okay. I'm getting back into making things, I'm the lightest I've been in well over a decade and the healthiest I've been, ever. The next few months are going to see some changes, and hopefully lead into a change in careers at some point soon. But right now I'm still recovering from the shock and grief of finding out that the person I loved was actually a character played by a sociopath... then realising that simply being committed to the process of being a decent person isn't enough. Because nobody else in my life here knows better than me that it is not in fact in what you do, it is all in how you do it. That's the part I'm fixing to change. Because I'm not even close to being the most screwed-up olive branch on the wild bonsai that is my family tree, and yet, I am still saddled with the title of the mentally-damaged black sheep. That said: I am so far past the point of trying to earn the approval of certain family members that the signal latency is measured in days, but it's certainly an excellent illustrative example.

Again: Details. That's what I'm interested in.