Comment by smeej
1 year ago
I came here to leave a comment related to this. This article has great advice, if you're normal enough that enough of "your people" exist to be able to find them and do something together.
But if you've spent your whole life being told by the whole world--even people you thought were really interesting and wanted to get to know--that you're "just too fucking weird," it lands more like, "Oh. More advice for other people."
Similarly, if you're a person who likes all kinds of things--but only for 6 weeks to 6 months and then becomes utterly bored of them--there is no stable group of "your people." There's just "these people, for now, I guess," and you hold them lightly because you know in a matter of months, when you don't share the passion for the one thing they're stably obsessed with, you won't have enough in common anymore for them to tolerate you.
I'm almost 40. I'm really at a decision point where I have to decide if I want to keep working on my underlying trauma wounds, in hopes that if I just work hard enough, I'll eventually break into the "fun kind of odd" category instead of "too fucking weird," and blend in enough to have "people," or whether I want to own that this is just how I am, and there's nothing to be done about it, so I should really do what I can to appreciate the fleeting tolerance of "people who don't know me very well yet" while it lasts, but invest most of my energy in trying to figure out if there's any way to be both happy and lonely.
It sounds like you need some friends in the maker space or something similar where tinkering in something temporary is normal. I'd say you're among friends in the HN space where tinkerers are more common!
Keep working on your trauma. Don't however think that your healing is a requirement to have friends, love, etc. We are all broken and hurt. We are broken together.
I've tried a couple times, but the interest in making physical things cycles through just like any other interest. Then it gets replaced by something like neurobiology or anthropology and I don't want to make things for awhile.
It seems like I really enjoy the beginnings of things, like if we run Pareto ratios twice, I like the 4% of the learning that gets me 64% of the understanding. And then it's enough and I'm done. It's enough to ask questions of the interesting people without sounding like a total n00b.
In the time it would take to master one thing, I become "barely proficient" in 25, but it's hard to build anything meaningful, including human connections, operating like that.
I know healing isn't a requirement to deserve the friendship of others. But if I keep operating like this because of it, it's definitely an impediment to building those friendships.
Ya, your situation is rough. Made many fold harder by today's isolating culture and technology.
Have you found any artists or creators to hang with?
Especially these days, artists have to be very tech savvy. I've always enjoyed helping others with their projects. (I possess the artistic talent of sea kelp rotting in the sun.)
In my experience, makerspaces have dabblers, not doers.
> Similarly, if you're a person who likes all kinds of things--but only for 6 weeks to 6 months and then becomes utterly bored of them--there is no stable group of "your people." There's just "these people, for now, I guess," and you hold them lightly because you know in a matter of months, when you don't share the passion for the one thing they're stably obsessed with, you won't have enough in common anymore for them to tolerate you.
My lord this cuts deep. Bonus points if you approach your interests in a way that nobody else seems to, leaving you feeling even more disconnected and alone when you're around people who share them.
I've been wrestling with this since (dropping out of) high school, I'm in my early 20s now. I lean towards embracing my idiosyncrasies and letting go of attachment towards getting the kind of social fulfillment I want. Ask me on a different day, though, and the siren's call of having a 'people' is too strong to pass up.
I like to think that learning to just be authentic to myself leads to both in the long run - if I can find a way to be okay with being alone, I'll be in a better place to reach out when the time comes. Still working on the first part of that hypothesis though.
Would you be interested in chatting more about this sometime? Shoot me an email, sheyaway at outlook.
Hey, just FYI, I did shoot you an email. Just mentioning in case it didn't come through.
Sounds familiar. Have you looked into ADHD and Autism yet?
Yeah, but the other symptoms don't line up. Screenings I've had have been negative.
It seems more likely that I have complex trauma from gestation, birth, infancy, and early childhood that really threw a monkeywrench into my neurological development. What we're trying to figure out now is whether I have enough neuroplasticity left at this stage for it to be recoverable, or if I'm just going to be like this forever. I'm definitely not neurologically typical, but I'm also not neurodivergent in a well-established category.
It does seem like there comes a point, though, where it's worth throwing in the towel on attempting to get "better" and just learning to make the most of what is.
> have enough neuroplasticity
I think so. It's hard. But doable.
I've reprogrammed myself at least 4 times so far (now 57yo).
Most recently, a few years ago, I went thru Swedish Hospital's Pain Clinic program. Synthesis of all the life skills recommended for trauma, mental health, and ADHD, plus some new ones for pain management.
I don't even believe this woo woo stuff even works. Yet it worked on me despite my skepticism. So what do I know?
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