....and really just disconnected. You know for a while, I was feeling ok, and all seemed well, but this last week.... I just can't shake this awkwardness in everything I do, again. Work, interpersonal relations, and just life in general seems to be wrong. Everything, just wrong. It's not as though I'm going to stop being myself and I do keep trying to figure it out, but I don't get it, and just can't seem to figure out why.
It probably boils down to people. Most of the time I'm very comfortable in the knowledge that I am different from 99% of them. Not better or worse, just different. I am not in touch with this collective idea that I need to impress, or best anyone, or that I need to be a sycophant, like so many of these people feel compelled to. I'm usually good with the fact that whatever the BS is they spout or live through, it's not part of my world. I can usually go through my day being exactly who I am without concern for the "fall out" they conjure in their need to complain, because they just can't wrap their head around me. I'm called mean, brutal, uncaring, and evil by those that don't really know me. And, like I wrote, most of the time, this is ok. But....
In this world full of people, recently I have become very cognizant that I am alone. Not that I don't have people I care for, and who also in return care for me, but my actions in dealing with these people are foreign to them. They sense I'm not at all the same as say someone that can really and truly be there for them. I can see it in their faces and I know they can't imagine who would behave like this. I feel like the character in the Camus novel; not in that I'd ever dismiss someone I honestly cared about, but I just don't think I feel the connection that so many others claim to have with those they love. In a way, I suppose, it hurts me.
Why can't I connect?
I've read that it's better to be feared than loved. THIS is utter shit. In my day to day life, I am highly respected and even sometimes revered not only by my coworkers and peers for my work, but in my social circles as well. I think people admire what I've done and how I conduct myself, but they don't treat me like a friend. I struggle mightily to reach out to them, like it's something everyone else does with ease, but for me, it's nearly impossible. And when I actually make an attempt to reach out to them, there are pleasantries exchanged, and sometimes excuses made, but I can always feel how ill-at-ease they are. As if an alien from another world is trying to communicate with them. They are unnerved, and they are afraid. And if I can feel that, then so could anyone.
Many reading this probably think I'm paranoid or narcissistic, but I think both of these are far too simplistic and dismissive. I'm not depressed, suicidal, or delusional about myself; in fact I'd posit that I'm keenly self-aware and knowledgeable in exactly who I am. I just wonder why I can't have that feeling so many others just get. They just seem to find their place in the big puzzle of the social structure and fit right in. I just stand on the outside and wonder why it's so easy for them. And if I'll ever get it.
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