Sorry everything I write is the worst kind of venting monologue, something brainworms. Why am I awake at 4am.
I really wish that the desire for socialisation was not a natural part of being human because socialisation causes me brain damage now and has done for a long time. I’m a serial message deleter, I will comb back over messages and conversations and wondering what subtexts and implied meanings I have missed, in what ways I have unknowingly jammed my foot in my mouth. If I’m lucky it becomes obvious days or weeks or months, or even years later, and I get to feel fucking mortified about it. I refuse to keep putting myself through that.
So I wish my brain would stop feeling lonely and shitty and sad and desiring to talk to people about stuff. I barely even have the means now anyway, I have no idea where to find servers or groups or whatever else to talk in, and no I will not try to go out into the real world and talk to people. That seems like a really atrocious idea, I can barely manage speaking any of what pops into my brain irl, it just becomes painful and stilted script following. Plus, where do you even find opportunities like that? Fuck putting myself into new and scary situations that might not even benefit me.
In many ways I actually really regret doing the digging-around about autism. I miss the blissful unawareness I had; I used to just think things were fine, or if they obviously weren’t people were just being weird, people were just weird sometimes. That’s the correct mindset, because fuck neurotypical social rules obviously. I knew (know? idk) someone who told me just that, but since the NT rules are the assumed ground rules, I always find myself checking for what I missed. Sitting with the vague and unhelpful notion that I said or did something wrong. This is the part of being a person that I despise.
Also using semicolons is cringe, I’m pretty sure I don’t even use them right.
This is probably the single most unhinged thing I’ve ever put on this website, but people have told me not to self censor and delete shit instead of posting it. I’m always losing that battle but I still have to try.
BONUS POINTS EDIT:
This is so stupid it’s embarrassing but also as I started leaning all the way left I’ve basically alienated everybody I know. I’ve leaned pretty far left for my entire adult life and longer, but I didn’t have a coherent framework or lens through which to view the world and make anything make sense.
My wife introduced me to hexbear and the discovery of political theory, of coherent leftist politics, basically busted my brain. There were a good few weeks where I was literally incapable of seeing people bitch about rising prices or rent or stuff and not going “workers of the world death to the bourgeousie” etc etc etc, infantile disorder. My favourite place to do it was in and around that one stupid lib-ass queer discord I talked in, which was fun, they had to make a rule against it.
The worst part was when I did it in a group chat I’d been invited to by two girls who apparently thought I was okay. For a few months it was cool and it almost seemed like I had friends for a bit. But 1) I made the mistake of going on an insane rant when one of them did a “haha korea great leader” joke, and I left that chat afterword. 2) After that I realised that I’d been putting in the majority of the relationship effort, i.e. was always the one starting conversations with people, and having to bug people to follow up so we could talk again. I decided right then that I was gonna start leaving people on read, and wait for them to message me, just once.
The majority never did, and the few times anyone did I flipped out and went on more rants which honestly was probably some kind of defense mechanism. But the other girl from that chat, not the dumb korea jokes one but the other one, who was really into internet fic, she literally just has never messaged me again which honestly still kind of hurts. She’s also disappeared completely from that server and I wonder if I did something so wrong somewhere that she just quit discord. Obviously all that has caused a decent bunch of psychic damage regarding talking to people, yay. I also haven’t even really talked to my family since I became the most unhinged & useless online commie. I suspect it will go poorly, Idk.
there’s a bunch of stuff like this!! Skip the Small Talk is national, though I’ve never been to one of their events. When I used to go to speed dating events I was most comfortable going together with a friend or two so I’d have someone to sort of rest “with” and regain energy between strangers. These events have local attendees, e.g. you can go to one at a lesbian bar to meet queer friends. So if you genuinely think it’d be good for you, I hope you consider talking to people irl! Our brains all got melted by the pandemic and WFH; if I don’t make a conscious effort to go out and socialize I feel like I get “weird” and inarticulate. So when I go to these events I expect to talk to other people who are weird and inarticulate in addition to well-practiced extroverts. My most memorable encounters were people who asked WILDLY awkward questions, conversed about deep childhood trauma or whatever for 5 minutes, and then we never saw each other again. I hope you find your people!
I mean this is the big issue right there. At least in my experience and a lot of my other friends, making close friends after school is mostly from meeting your friends’ friends through repeated group functions. It’s wayyyy easier going from 1 -> 10+ friends than it is from going to 0 -> 1 friend after school
And I feel like people approach duos/small groups at parties or events with strangers like that one way more often than a single person too
The ones I went to were structured speed dating events. You sit at a table, talk to the person across from you, and everybody rotates when the organizer says. The friend is mostly for moral support so that you don’t flake; you could go alone and have fun.
Oh that sounds cool, did you ever end up with close platonic friends from speed dating events before? Or just relationships
No but I was only looking for dates. I wasn’t too successful on that front either, but I think speed dating type events are good for the experience / socialization practice on their own terms which might be helpful to OP.