I’ve had an insight as to why people don’t want to deal with me sometimes.

First, the problem : People have founds me kind of hard to deal with sometimes for my entire life. So very many times problems have come up where the obvious solution would have been for someone to just talk to me about the thing in question.

And when I bring that up, the other people involve just kind of stare at me blankly because they can’t explain why they didn’t just do that, even to themselves, and especially not to me.

And this puzzles and saddens me because as far as I can tell, I’m a very friendly and reasonable and approachable guy who is never cranky or difficult and who is usually quite happy to do or give whatever it is you want.

And yet people dodge me sometimes, and prefer not to deal with me, and this leaves me sad and lonely sometimes despite my pleasant demeanor.

So what gives?

I think the problem is that while my attention is usually quite pleasant, it is also intense.

It’s like I am shining a big bright spotlight on people. And that can be hard to take. There are times when people would much rather avoid these high beams of mine and it doesn’t matter how warm and pleasant and entertaining I am because the sheer brilliance of my dazzling display can really drain people.

The thing is, all of us occurs in that murky and mysterious zone of interpersonal interplay that is social empathy and that strange land contains much that our culture simply does not and maybe even cannot articulate.

So most people don’t even know how to explain why they find me tiring to be around and sometimes would just rather… not do that.

They are as mystified as I am because they too see me as pleasant and funny and nice and all those other stellar attributes of mine and yet they also have the lived experience of doing the equivalent of crossing the street to avoid me.

“Oh god, not him. Not today. Not right now. ” they think and frantically try to avoid dealing with me like they’re a celebrity trying to elude the paparazzi.

And like said celebrity, if they actually get caught in the spotlight they know they will have to be “on” and smiling and friendly and so forth.

Again, it’s not that my spotlight is unpleasant, just a bit… much.

And then they feel guilty, of course. After all, I’m so sweet and nice and funny and etc. And they can sense I crave attention and connection, and that if I knew I was being circumvented it would hurt me deeply.

And that guilt just makes me even harder to be around.

So I get it now. I want attention so bad that when I get it, the show is on, my megawatt personality turns on full blast, and I blow people away with all that personality.

It’s a tragedy of innocence, really.

Clearly, if I want to be a little easier to deal with, I need to learn to dial it back a little. To relax and just be myself and not try so god damned hard. To not turn every interaction into a song and dance act.

Maybe this is why people like me are more comfortable being the star of the show than we are at the cast party afterwards.

On stage, glowing like the metal on the edge of a knife is wonderful. It makes me into a mesmerizing and charismatic performer, a compelling orator, and a pretty amazing dude to be around if you’re ready for me.

But out of the spotlight I’m this odd critter that doesn’t really fit into the normal everyday world so I’m rather awkward and nerdy and strange, even downright spooky at times.

Maybe what I really need is a healthier way to express myself.

I need to get to work on that.

More after the break.

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The truth about touch

Here’s a bit about the modern view of touch :

I know that I deeply, deeply crave touch.

It’s the main reason I am such a snuggle bug as Fruvous. I don’t get cuddles and pets in the real world so I have to get them in text based VR instead.

It’s entirely possible that if I had a sufficiently snuggly partner, I would not feel nearly as driven to seek out cuddles in fox form.

Or maybe I would. It could very much be that when it comes to cuddles and attention, I am a “thirsty dog” who can never get enough.

In both cases, not getting enough of something at a critical age leaves a being craving that thing forever with no possibility of satiation.

A very sad thought, but one I need to face.

Touch is definitely a need I rarely if ever openly address. Like a lot of males in our society, I don’t believe it to be a need I am capable of addressing at all so my only choice is to sublimate it into my fursona and ignore it the rest of the time.

And of course, virtual cuddles don’t really fill the need. They only help with the cravings. Cuddles in reality are always going to be preferable.

Kind of like sex, really. Which could be seen as an extreme form of touch.

I definitely feel like I did not get touched nearly enough during some critical phase of my pre-verbal years and that this might have been the first of many, many developmental windows that would come and go without my even knowing.

Basically, my life has been a developmental train wreck. In purely scientific terms, I am retarded on many, many levels. So many things that happen to “everyone” never happened to me at all.

I am a strange and alien being.

Julian and I recently watched the movie IF, which stands for “Imaginary Friend”, and movie is quite beautifully made and acted but the plot makes no sense at all.

Anyhow, it got me wondering why I never had an imaginary friend. Or a security object, or a stuffed animals I treated like it was really alive, and so on.

And the only answer I can come up with is that something happened to me, before the rape, that kept me from ever having an “age of magic” where I was capable of imagining the friend I needed and believe them to be true.

As to what that thing was, I can only answer : intelligence? For as long as I can remember I have had this rapacious mind that devoured and digested the world in its attempts to understand everything.

And somehow that meant that I couldn’t have an imaginary friend because I knew that they were not there.

As far as I can recall, I have never believed in magic or had faith in things unseen. Things made sense. It all connected. There was no room in my mind for believing things without evidence or proof, just because I needed them to be true.

And I feel like I have suffered terribly as a result. I truly believe that a certain basic amount of faith – defined as a bit of “wiggle room” in reality in which you can generate what you need emotionally – is necessary for the mental health of even the most vehement of atheists, and without it, we wither on the vine.

It is toxic to need a reason to be happy.

It is far better to need a reason not to be.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.