I've taken the liberty of reviving this thing. Sorry, but I don't fit in a world where thoughts are seemingly incapable of exceeding 140 characters.
What brought this on? Well, I'm doing this during a nearly 10-month losing streak: May: Lost my job. June: Knee degenerates. July: Other knee follows. August: Lost my fall semester. September: Woman uses me. October: Stuck in unnecessary program. November: See September. December: Death pays a visit. January: Lost my academic career. February: Crush two fingers in a freak accident.
I dealt with that alone.
Why am I making a point about loneliness? Picture this: Your family you see everyday? They don't exist. The long-term group of people you call friends? See them twice a year. That significant other who keeps you in the game through thick and thin? Never in your lifetime.
Miraculously, I'm still a functioning person (suck it Gibson), but apparently enduring 10 months of fail alone without a strong support system is extremely unhealthy, and one afternoon while raiding the fridge I collapsed. The good news? I regained consciousness in time for Archer.
Sounds bad? Well it's worse when no one knows you're a member of a certain 20% of the human population - including you. At least y'know, until now.
For those unable/too lazy to click that link, I learned from a professional that I'm an HSP - a highly sensitive person. Means that my brain is the organic equivalent of a supercomputer, everytime. Awesome, right?
Well, it is. Allow me to make an example: If you've ever seen my music collection, you'd know that the archive is pushing 10,000 songs and most of them are purely instrumental. But what you don't know, is that I can thoroughly identify every single one from a simple excerpt (try me out next time). Yet, I can't tell you what I ate three days ago.
Being an HSP doesn't make you a genius - it just turns your neurological senses all the way up to 11, as the name implies. As demonstrated by the example, and possibly vouched for by many people, I think in an obviously derivative way, but not in that "why are you walking around without a strait jacket" way. Been that way all my life, to great success, and also great failure.
And that brings me to the big downside of being an HSP: You feel everything very, very deeply. "Everything?" Everything. Again, as the name implies, I am highly sensitive. Doesn't mean I'm walking around with a Kleenex every five minutes, but it does mean that when things go wrong, I don't just know they went wrong - I feel they went wrong. And let me tell you - it's crippling.
It brings me back to dealing with failure alone. As someone who can't stop thinking intensely, being alone kicks it into overdrive in a way that feels like aggravated assault. I don't make a habit of complaining because it relies on two things: 1) My ability to convey the intensity of my feelings, and 2) The capacity of understanding in another person, which is often lacking.
Since those two things are oil and water, I unwisely/inevitably opt to hold it all in, and if my frustrations are unaddressed like they always are, my brain gets overloaded and it crashes. That is why a trip to the fridge suddenly turned into hours of unconsciousness. It was the first time in almost three years that happened, because I had been relatively content recently.
So when I finally got up, I realized that I spent the past month being a hub for intensely negative thoughts, and I decided on the spot to isolate myself in a familiar, welcoming environment for a month: Playing stuff online with the crew, exclusively. That meant I wasn't using Facebook, answering my phone, using IMs, or trying to contact anybody who's seen me in person.
During that time, my fingers healed (which actually made doing the things I love to do easier) but I wasn't ready for that stuff still. I didn't want to hear relatively happy people be happy because all that does is make me feel worse. Involuntary over-feeling leads to involuntary over-absorbing, and I think I have enough people trying to kick me while I'm down.
But like most things, it can't last forever. As fun and stress-relieving as playing a bunch of rounds with my international gang is, I still have to face the rest of the world. The world, that I still feel sees me as nothing more than a utility. The world that quite frankly, I feel can be a little more evenly distributed in terms of how much I enjoy being in it.
That will not come overnight, and that will certainly be challenged time and time again by people, but right now, I believe that I am on my own this time for a reason. Not because of other people, but because of me, and I am going to use this space to assist me in my never-ending quest for happiness.
That being said, expect more engaging posts here. It should be recognized that my ability to reflect on myself won't be a regular feature, but this one had to be done, so don't get used to it.
Here goes nothing!
