lonely college life by the invisable man

[Guest]

Oh I just realized I didn't say it in my post, but this and the above post are the invisible man talking.  The real invisible man.

 

[Guest]

Invisible man again,

Just wanted to say, vector, Ishmael, ellisa, glaze I’ve read and enjoyed you're posts.  

Ellissa: shockingly and surprisingly positive, I loved it.  I love your statement about infinite possibilities.  They feel good, almost too much. What brought you here?  

Vector:  thanks, it’s fuckin' great that you connected with my posts.  Are you Australian or English? I know it will sound cliché and corny, but if you are what a show that underneath the superficial things that don't matter we all have the same fundamental fragile feelings.  And I did hear from the girl recently. Not a happy ending but something interesting.

Ishmael: I just want to hear more of your story. I feel like I see people like you everyday.  I really feel similar to your line about college, that were, "missing out on something big and important", in terms of socially and all that it's connected to. Please write again

Glaze: haven't posted in while I guess.  Hope to hear from you soon.




And if you’re still here, my apologies to you the blue-collar man.  As a great equalizer and show of my human vulnerability I was so irritated at your post simply because I was none other than hungry.  I shouldn't have responded so harshly and like an *******.  But it was how I felt at the time.  If you do really feel lonely and sad I would actually really like too hear your stories without advice (slight lol).  But again sorry, maybe I’ll hear from you again.

 

[elissa]

Invisible man,
Well let's see... How do I summarize myself in the most vulnerable and honest way that I can... I guess I'm gonna have to be blunt in a way I would never be with people in real life!

I'm a cool ass person. I have an awesome sense of humor (ask my sister..), I'm cute, I'm fairly intelligent and have been blessed with the amazing talent of songwriting. I'm proud of who I am.
I also have good people skills, which is why I know people all over town and have plenty of numbers in my cell phone.

But I'm weird.

I'm weird in a way I can't explain, but my weirdness makes me extreeeemely picky as to truly connecting with other individuals. And even when I meet new people who I like and feel a connection with, at this age those friendships feel so temporary and conditional... And it always winds up with me making the effort to keep the friendship alive, which eventually gets tiring so I give up, and slowly watch a potentially good friendship dissolve. I also seem to have difficulty connecting with people on my 'level'... it seems i surround myself either with people who make me feel like they think im super cool and look up to me, in which i dont really get much out of the friendship except the freedom to be 100% myself, or with people who are above me, for example smarter and more knowledgable than me, which makes me feel this constant feeling of competition and inadequacy and forces me to put on a show. For once I just want to meet someone that challenges me while also making me feel appreciated!

What brought me here was a particularly lonely night about a month ago... I had just broken up with my ex who was my first close friend in years, I had come home from work in bad spirits and wanting to shoot the honeysuckle with someone, ANYONE, but noone was around and my family was sleeping cuz it was late at night and well, I had noone to turn to during the most difficult time of my life! I just didnt know what to do! So I typed in I am Lonely in google, I'm not really sure why, but I'm so glad it brought me here because I feel like I can be real here in a way that I can't in my everyday encounters with people.
What I miss more than anything is a sense of belonging and community. It seems that everywhere I travel, and in every community I make myself a part of, I search for reasons not to feel like I fit in! When in America, I complain about all the negative qualities that a lot of americans have that I don't (the world ignorance, the fascination with alcohol, the superficial interraction, the ignorance about the food they eat etc etc). When in Sweden, I complain about the swedes and how reserved and dry and depressed they 'all' are. I just feel different all the ******* time. It used to be my pride and joy to be the weirdo in the crowd, and it still is in a way, but in a way it's gotten really ******* old and I just want to belong!

I guess added on to everything is just that I don't feel like I'm doing what I'm supposed to right now... I go to a music school (berklee) and HATE it.. I'm studying music synthesis which is basically learning how to produce music, and contrary to high school where I got mostly A's and some B's, I am now one of the dumbest students in the major... Always struggling to understand the most fundamental concepts and feeling like I'm the only one in the major who doesn't just 'get it'... I am trying to make it as an artist-songwriter in the pop music industry, and though I'm confident I'll make it, it feels like it's such a sloooooowwwww process and I have too much motivation and energy inside me to sit here and wait for things to kick off! I also have insecurities about the fact that my profession isn't exactly respectable, I mean writing songs is kind of an effortless process, and it's more fun than it is work... I want to feel good about what I do, I want to feel like I'm working hard for it and learning lots along the way, and I know once things take off it will be like that, but right now I have waaaay too much free time and I'm not getting much value out of school. So I think that my unhappiness is making it difficult to connect with others too since it seems like everyone has it together and are gonna be working hard at their respectable jobs, with way more knowlegde and skill than I will ever have as a musician.. So I constantly feel this inadequacy and it's preventing me from feeling 'part of the crowd' I think.

I miss being a kid!!! It was so easy then. Love was unconditional, friendships lasted longer and were more genuine, things felt safe and 'right'...

 

[Guest]

greeting from Vector.  
i thought it was saturdaynight last night when i post my 1st reply! it was friday's night!!! how funny is that!
was reading The `Real` invisible man comments of today,  and hope the blue collar man doesnt get too offended.
yeah, i still can't believe there's like minded people around! in far different countries, with such a connection! i think i would say,i had a shock when i read ur 1st post last night!

Elissa, was reading your post! and do u know what!? you made me smile!! the last bits of your post r exactly what happening to me now!  i can feel every word of you said!
dumbest students in the major, slooow process,Always struggling to understand the most fundamental concepts ..................
i'm doing master in Aerospace eng.  it's enough to say, it's going exactly the way u mentioned, yeah i also used to get A's and B's at uni and high schools.

well, well well.  Invisible man, Blue Collar man Elissa, Ishmael, Glaze! where r u!?   feel like i'm starting to have friends here! but as Elissa said: watch a potentially good friendship dissolve. hope it's not the case here.
and by the way i'm from the UK.

 

[Guest]

from Vector,
Elissa saied:
I miss being a kid!!! It was so easy then. Love was unconditional, friendships lasted longer and were more genuine, things felt safe and 'right'...  stop

you're totally right Elissa,
cheers

 

[Guest]

This is Ishmael once again.

First of all, I wanted to say to all of you guys that its pretty profound reading your posts. Anonymity allows for such honesty...it's great.

Invisable, you wanted to know more about my story, so here I go. I'm a college freshman, virgin, and a commuter. I went to one and only one prom during high school with a girl from another school who I think was just desperate to find a date. She's the only girl I've ever kissed and I only did so out of my own 18 year old desperation. Needless to say, she severed contact with me after that magical senior prom. But, like you invisable, at this point, I don't really care that much about sex, even though I'm a virgin. I just want a relationship where I can feel genuinely comfortable with another person. Weird thing for a college male to desire, right?

Right now, no one really has any contact with me, I'm just a nameless person going about my business. Not to get all post-modern on you, but today people have mastered the fine art of ignoring others. The big problem is that loneliness, the inability to share your thoughts and feelings with anyone, leads into depression, which just saps everything else from you. I have ups and downs, of course, but my up periods consist mostly of waiting for my next down. My motivation is shot, getting anything done requires incredible force of will.

But what can I really say? Because of my socially stunted existence, I'm missing out on this ******* milestone: college life. Everyone's supposed to be drunk all the time and having copious amounts of sex and so on and so forth. It doesn't bother so much that I'm not a part of this, but I know...I know there are people on campus I can relate to. The problem is just finding them. But, once again, there is so much in the way. The devil's in the details as they say. All those little things: my own fear of looking like an idiot, of rejection, all that.

I'll post more later, but thank you guys for your own posts and for reading mine. You're wonderful people in my book.

 

[Guest]

Us lonely people should be writers! I mean every time I look back at all these sites it seems that another novel has been written, and it should be written. Somone should read it! Luckily the internet provides us with some sort of hope that someone will, and that seems to be enough.

I agree with most of what you have to say. I believe that it is a problem with society. I have sifted through hundreds of posts this evening just reading. It is horribly wrong to say that this many people can be affected this way and blame it on the individual. It is obvious that something else is at work here.

I have no answers like the rest of you, but I did learn something in Advanced Social Psycholoigy that set my mind at ease. It is called the 'self-fulling phrophecy'. According to this we all will act exactly how we believe we should act even if it is contradictory to how we really act. There was an experiement conducted, by whom I can't remember, in which they gave a teacher a set of students. They descreatly told her that this half was good and this half was bad. All the students in fact scored the same earlier, which is why they were chosen. The students that were told to the teacher as being bad tested badly!

I think it goes further. I think perhaps our own judgments about ourselves create alternate outcomes from the norm. We have paved our own future in such a bad light that we can't find the good path becuase of the clouds we created!

I recommend any lonely person watch "what the bleep do we know?" It may make you feel a bit more in control. At least it has set my mind at ease. It did me, and I hope it helps someone.

 

[Vector]

dont know what's happeneing, cant view any replies

 

[Guest]

Blue collar boy here.

I made my post and then decided to check out what else is on this forum. Then it hit me,(cause it's got a bif friggin sign) "A lonely life." I felt a little retarded after that, I thought I was posting in some random forum that I had googled when I typed in "I Hate college."

But that asside, I apologize for angering you and hurting you, like Mr. Edgars said in Babylon 5, "there's too much pain in the universe allready." Even if I hadn't found out the nature of this forum, I'd still apologize.

So this is your topic, and I guess I'll tell you what I feel, no advice or anything.

Back home I was a nobody, at least like our society judges nobodies. I had good grades, but I didn't go to parties, and as people took things over the edge in highschool (some used drugs too much, others got into gangs, etc...) I stayed the same. But I had people on my level to bounce my emotions off of. Unlike Ellisa I made a few strong, lasting friendships. I loved my home, I loved my friends. Yeah, love, I really loved that place man. I miss it so much sometimes, I just want to cry, and if no one's watching, I'll shed a tear. I still remember when I left home, I lived on the East coast and moved to the midwest. It was rough, it was horrible. My mom and dad couldn't afford living there anymore, and I couldn't afford staying home and making a life on a construction worker's salary with my parents gone. I'm going to college, I'm in the military to pay for it and cause I like guns (yeah that sounds retarded, I know, but I like weapons and the army, just like some people like fast cars, I'm not an idiot though), and I got no one out here. Plus my parents moved from home, so I never get to go back.

Back to Ellisa's last post.

I had friends on my level. And the friendships weren't transitory. I could talk to them, I knew them, they knew me, we could just chill out, it was beautiful. I never wanted much in life, but those days spent hanging out with them were beautiful.

I also knew loneliness all along, but certainly not as much as you invisable man. 8th grade was the best year of my life, and highschool messed everything up. The old group of friends , we went our separate ways. I was ostracized, I wasted weekends, I felt like honeysuckle.

It feels real bad, makes you real sick when you bust your ass all day working and you call an old friend and you know he doesn't want to hang out with you for some stupid reason, and you want to just ******* hurt him, and beat him. You hate him so **** much....

But God helped me out. Junior summer and Senior year a lot of fences were mended, and the friends that were still in the hood, well we all had a decent time. (I'm ranting but I hope y'all read it, cause I read everything you write.)

My best friend and I always played basketball everyday after I was done with work. I just felt like saying that, we had the deepest conversations, you would not believe.

Week before I left we all decided to have a little get together. We got drunk, it was fun. But one of my friends said he loved me. I'm not a faggot, neither is he, he was drunk. But thinking back on that, as weird as it is to say it, I loved him too. Not like you love a woman, or your mom, but as a friend. I wish we did more of that together, in highschool, but we wasted too much time....

I can still vividly remember the day I left. Out here, college, the real life, it's so **** strange. I don't have any people on my level. They're out there, somewhere, but how the hell do I contact them. My roomate is the quintessential ignorant, American idiot who tries to be refined, but is doomed to failure. Sometimes I wonder if he is lonely and just tries to bury it in booze, parties where no one communicates, really communicates, ******* women but never loving them and studying? Maybe so maybe not. As for the rest, there's all sorts of shades.

You know, one of my teachers said the kids that go away to college come back more mature. I think they just come back emotionally callused, perfectly trained to survive in our society. If being more mature means being more dead inside, than I want to be immature.

After typing all this, I feel like an idiot dispensing advice, I'd rather just share my feelings. But even so, that advice does work, if not perfectly.

Finding someone on my level, a real friend, boy that'd be nice. Sometimes I wonder if it's even possible, if there's even a point to it? After all, I have 4 years here, then I move on again. who gives a honeysuckle right? i'll never see any of these ******* again.

 

[Guest]

P.S. that friend who said he loved me, it wasn't in an erotic way, he just kind of blurted it

 

[Guest]

blue collar boy

I just finished watching this series on TV. I watched the whole Babylon 5 Series. It is more than a TV show for me, it's a saga, it's just great. I recommend for anyone, it's a lot more than a sci-fi show, it's a drama in the classic sense of the word.

But now it's over.

See back when I had friends there was something to live for, to work for. Now, without them, there is this void. I remember when I used to be lonely at home, I'd turn to video games to fill my void, but social contact is what I really craved. It's like my friend says, everything's a drug in a way. Now I wonder how I will fill my void again.

The scary thing is, with little to make me happy, I'm afraid I'll lose my will to work. Not that it matters as much in college, unlike highschool, I just have to get decent, not stellar, grades. Still though, it's not easy.

 

[elissa]

I recommend any lonely person watch "what the bleep do we know?" It may make you feel a bit more in control. At least it has set my mind at ease. It did me, and I hope it helps someone.

Great recommendation! I don't know if you read my post in a different topic, but I went on a little rant about Quantum Physics. That movie was very very interesting, and I probably only understood 10% of it! haha. Do you feel like sharing your opinions on the subject/give a summary of what the movie is about?

 

[Vector]

i think it's the quantum physics to be blamed of our `let's say` problem. only jokin!
but how come! i do like those things too! didn't watch the Babylon 5 Series but just had a look in google! they're prty much the same things i find very intersting!
2 weeks ago, i felt like i'm loosing my mind reading such things! quantum physics,Space-Time,Dark Energy,Nicola Tesla,Pop Lazar!
anywy, wouldnt go further, will go back to read the missed posts! i see Blue collar man has sent something intersting.
sorry Blue collar man for the name but we all know you by this name now!!

i'll be back!

 

[Guest]

Hi invisible man here,

When I first saw “what the bleep”, I called my only friend over excitedly. This movie felt like it was verging on some profound epiphany. I watched it first by myself quite high and again with my friend quite high. It seemed spectacular. Like anything is possible. Which still may be, but the movie is a piece of fraudulent honeysuckle. For a sobering effect I first checked out the Amazon reviews. Which as you all probably know, even your favorite album, or any album you think is good, even if you don’t personally love it, is shitted on by multiple people. So it’s good to check that out once in a while. So after reading the many flaws in the movie there I watched yes once again with a more critical eye.

Those water thoughts things with the words taped to them are really ice crystals and the scientists who performed the experiment was exposed as a fraud, he has done many iffy experiments like this.

Ramtha is just a ******* maniac. She was a nobody housewife, who had an epiphany who now thinks she is "channeling" a male general (hence the stupid outfit) from 35,000 years ago; she was in character during her interview. And you don't see it in the first one but she is smoking a dad like wood pipe throughout her interview. Also her "ramtha-camp" you crawl around in a pitch-black maze on your hands and knees in the mud looking for some ramtha like enlightenment. Not to mention these camps cost in the five figures! She is full of herself and dogshit.

In the second movie, down the rabbit hole, the sequel, they interviews the same people again and the movie's ideas just get more iffy and sound more like new age babble.

The doctor who talked about the objects in two places at the same time. The one who said that people probably couldn't handle it. I know he seemed like a good guy, but no he is not. He came back in the second one defending his argument weakly. From his tone in his defense he sounded like he received a lot of criticism for that statement tin the first one because he sounded unappealingly desperate and trimmed down and lessened the scope of the first statement. Now pretty much he says you can see some pics of light spread out.

WTF is with the cartoons? They’re in the first and second one.
This is an adult movie right? Seems like cheap easy filler to me.

Another flaw, the guy seemed smart. White bread in front of a fountain, looked like old crazy professor. He was talking about particles disappearing. He said where do they go? I’ll give you two answers".

You never get the second answer. Not a big deal but serious movie and logic flaw in my mind.

Also there ideas seems to all be based on that partition experiment with wave and particles. y'know, one slot, two slots. Someone undoubtedly knows more about here but it seems like they extrapolated one experiment to say that you can walk on water or anything else you may desire. And that matter doesn't exist when you don't look at it. Einstein even said that theory, when it was first introduced sounds like BS


The stuff seems like bullshit because it is permanently safe like a philosophy. If the variable is simply belief then its philosophy. You could scream to someone, WHY CANT I WALK ON WATER?! Ramtha or any one of the other money grubbing frauds could say, "Well you don't believe, they must still be doubt in your mind". “But I can teach you…for a fee”. You can choose to believe the movie but when it invariably doesn’t work for you the way you think it can or should, you can always blame your own flaws.

Believe me I took that movie hook line and sinker when I first saw it; I wanted to scream from the rooftops the praises for that film. I'm glad I didn't. You'll start to see the holes too. All the quick cuts and quick sound bytes are designed to manipulate and make your mind easily confused and docile. It’s not your fault. It’s a little like a fast moving magician. They slip the honeysuckle in through the back door while your looking at something else. There are a few smart people on there. But the blending and extrapolating of a few quantum physics theories into some back to future matrix type antics is crap. Just another film wanting to try and make you feel good and take your money.

One great quote that I’ll paraphrase, "there ain't nothing new under the sun", don't know who its from.


And to blue collar man,

I think we would not like each other in person. Your tone, attitudes, interests, life style, ideas seem distasteful to me. Maybe the feeling is mutual. It’s odd that we’ve talked so much though so perhaps that good in a way. But I reluctantly did like your post, thanks. But like I’ve said before underneath all the superficial bullshit that doesn’t matter like all the things mentioned in the second sentence we all feel the same. If we met with no guards, judgments, attachments, we would get along great. I liked you statement about college,

You know, one of my teachers said the kids that go away to college come back more mature. I think they just come back emotionally callused, perfectly trained to survive in our society.

Good call. But perhaps only for the lonlies. I think because socialites and socially active people are in a fuckin' playground now. If you’re in, you’re fuckin' in. You’re meeting new (to you) cool people every night. But if you’re out, you're fuckin' out. Like the great analogy of looking at the house where a party’s at as you're looking in from the street. Wet, and standing in the rain, no umbrella. I don't want it to happen, but I think a callusing effect happens because it becomes so painful to be alone perpetually. No one wants to hang out with you because like getting a job, you have no previous experience. We all have poor social resumes, and probably professional ones too. At least I do. Perhaps college is the final test of our callousness. "Can you be around all your personal pain and still do your trivial work"? Well Congratulations then, here’s a ticket now granting you entry in low level mind-numbing office jobs that any monkey could do if you’re lucky, if not get me a grande latte moron".

Still I think your advice is bullshit and you should too, but that is harsh and I shouldn’t talk so informally, but ahh whatever. Don’t be so self-assured. Still, still, still though you can’t be all that bad if one of your friends loves you and you love him. I know you’re fearful of the gay thing (since your had to specify) and that’s fine I know it wasn't supposed to be that way. Since you insist on posting here for some reason I glad at least your posts are better now, so thanks.

But again, I’ll plug it because I so changed the way I saw the entire world,

Ishmael by Daniel Quinn and the sequel My Ishmael

Both are fuckin’ awesome. Won’t make you feel better about the world, if anything worse, but it puts everything, and I mean everything in perspective.

 

[Guest]

Very novel idea invisible man, if you're in your fuckin in and vice-versa. That is very smart, and probably true. Very good paragraph, and I guess I'm on my way, I took a break from work to post this, but hey it's so true. You got to take the pain, do your work, and then smile with that degree at the end. Heck, I will smile, cause after 4 years if I haven't failed or committed suicide, (probably end up being an alcoholic, lol), I'm done with the pain for a while.

But I do wonder about the practicality of college friendships, since you can see their end approach far in advance. It's only four years, and as far as I can tell, the "friends" are nothing more than drinking friends half the time, but time will tell.

That part about how we got poor social resume, I also like that. I guess when we graduate that means that we've dealt with the pain and so we can take on a good old office job.

And I like it when we're frank, so say bullshit, it doesn't hurt me, I've felt a lot more pain in my life, the physical kind too.

But I really disagree that we wouldn't like each other in person. The tough part would be to break through our walls(whether physical and the kind that keeps us lonely in the first place), but past that, I think it would work out.

Don't judge a book solely by what it posts in a forum, you'd be very surprised what friends I had... And judging by the way you think, we could be friends.

And yeah, the gay thing... It's pretty simple, when I was kid in elementary school certain people made fun of my name, called me a faggot constantly, so I lashed out (**** I still get angry posting it) and physically assaulted some of them. Both ways, it traumatized me slightly, or whatever, traumatized seems so melodramatic, I just don't want to be called a faggot ever again.

 

[Guest]

Aren’t you more complex than from first reading blue-collar man!  Yes perhaps you are right; if we able to both take down our superficial anxious and fearful of each other walls we could be friends.  Good to see your making fun of yourself.  I’ve always like self-deprecation, it has a great calming disarming quality to it.  Hey being gay is far from being anything to feel bad about. Being that the Greek great warriors all had sex with equal amounts of men and women I think that (even though I would need to break down a lot of condition in myself) separating it into either/or is bullshit.  Some religious crap that has ulterior motives of control.  Anyway doesn't having sex with anybody you want make more sense and seem healthier mentally and physically, and emotionally (as long as they are clean of course)?  Look at monkeys.  They fresia anything!  It’s a false fear and odd categorization.  Yes one could argue that only man and woman make kids but so what?  Does liking bj from guy mean you should be considered a bad person?  Our culture is weird.  I’ve never had a desire to try homosexuality but that's because of the social and gender implications associated with it.  Why would I not want to have a new experience?  But even phrasing it like that in our culture is considered, “gay” and then is labeled and judged.  So therefore not even discussed or brought up.  Why do we have so little freedom?  We just choose which occupation we want to waste our lives and what products are given to us to.  Homosexuality has such a stigma and bad tone to it.  Did you know that gay is really an acronym for Good As You with no relation to the traditional meaning of it as happy and merry?  Too bad, we lost a good word.  Anyway I didn't like your tone at first but I like it more now.  Smarter than I first thought. Thanks. And now I’m hungry,

Hope to hear from others as well, thanks for reading everyone; you’re all awesome people!

 

[Guest]

Hi invisible man again,

Just a quick thought that's it then I promise I’ll stay away for a little while,

After sharing on here like this with each other in such an innocent way, innocent in the way that we don't get paid to be here or we not trying to impress each other, that we could probably be friends with each easier and better in real life.  I thought because all our personal feelings and ideas have already been exposed already we have that in common which is deeper than any common superficial interest.  Some friends try their whole lives trying to say things to each other that are probably said on this forum all the time.  Just a quick idea.

 

[Vector]

u're right invisible man
i already feel like we're all friends. we should do sometihng before everyone go apart! which is always the case, i have read some ideas,which i think, are not very practical, something like organise a trip! too funny to be real. anyway
what about a group in yahoo or msn!?

all the best

 

[Guest]

Hi Guys,

I just wanted to say that I can relate 100% to what Invisible man has to say. I've read every post in this thread, and its really comforting to know that what I'm not the only one feeling these feelings...

Kyle

 

[Guest]

Yeah, Vector, I'd like something like that, it's blue collar boy btw. Something could be worked out.

I know we only know each other over a net forum, but after all there are vacations. I mean, we could try to get together, bar that a yahoo msn deal.