As you all know, I have been pondering my lonely childhood lately (well, more so than usual, anyhow) and I believe that I have reached another signpost along the path towards solving the puzzle that is myself, and I figure it is time that I wrote down my conclusions before setting off for the next one.

Specifically, I have been wondering just why none of those attempts by other kids to befriend me…. took. They tried, they really did. But I just walked away. And what makes that worse is that nearly all of them were people on the fringe just like myself, kids stuck on the outside looking in, and still, I rejected them.

Why? Why did I do that? I can’t help but think the answer to that question will be very important for my recovery. So what was wrong with me that I couldn’t be reached at all?

I think I have the answer now. The reason nobody could befriend me was that I did not want to change. I have always been very strongly an individual and extremely stubborn, and that kept me from making the changes to myself that would have been required for me to learn to get along with my fellow kids and, as it were, meet them half way.

It’s not that I wasn’t trying. I was desperately lonely and really wanted a friend, someone I could have fun with and not be so alone. It’s not like I rejected these kids right away when they tried to befriend me. I tried to connected with them. But I lacked that vital bit of social IQ that tells you that you have to let a relationship change you in order to let it in.

And sure, there were unusually big obstacles. I had a lot of trouble relating to my peers because I just was not like them, especially in the first (and worst) four years of elementary school. The gap between me and them was far wider than with any two average kids. I had a much longer distance to bridge.

But still, I look back to then and I wonder just what was wrong with me. Would it have been that huge a sacrifice of self to let down my guard and join my fellow kids in their world? Sure, it might not have been as mentally stimulating as I liked, but I might nevertheless have learned a hell of a lot more about life that way.

But I was too ignorant to know that there were things I did not know, let alone to understand that there was a way I could learn it. I was so frozen inside and timid and shy that I did not even grasp that there was such a thing as a social world. My isolated life was all I had ever known. All my socializing had come through my siblings, and that was (I think) the vital ingredient that kept me from ending up yet another victim of Asperger’s Syndrone. That, and a few key teachers who hung in there long enough to relate to me at least a little.

Tragically, though, deep down I just plain did not “get it”. I earnestly wanted to get along, have friends, not have to be afraid of my fellow students any more, and basically be a real kid. But like I have said before, the idea of actively trying to fit in, of looking at what the other kids do and doing that, never occurred to me.

After all, why should I do what they do when what they do seems stupid and boring and pointless to me?

Seems like a logical enough statement… but pure logic is always in peril of falling into error because of that which the logician does not comprehend. There’s actually a million reasons I should have opened up to my fellow students and done what they did. I could have accelerated my own social development by leaps and bounds just by unbending enough to at least pretend to be a more normal sort of kid.

Answers can be logical, reasonable, plausible, and sensible, and still be completely and utterly wrong. If you expect everything to be logical and reject all that is not, you risk being trapped in your own ignorance.

Some people know and understand a lot more than you, but you will never learn from them if you never let them in. The adults around me as a kid, and even my fellow kids, might not have been as bright as me but that does not mean I could not have learned a hell of a lot from them, especially socially.

Intelligence is not omniscience, after all, no matter how smart you are.

Then, when I did finally get good friends in college, they were all socially defective nerds like me, so there was no chance of me learning what I needed to know from them.

If anything, I tended to have a slightly higher social IQ than them, which is a lot like being the tallest among pygmies.

So I was – and still am – trapped in my own frozen little bubble. Feeling like I am every so smart and that I know, see, and understand so much more than others. Even showing off my psychological insight and acumen, as if understanding people like they are bugs under glass or animals at a zoo is any kind of substitute for true human understanding.

Being a humanist does not make one human. I can understand how other people tick with extraordinary depth and clarity, but that doesn’t do me a bit of good when I am alone in a room full of strangers. My professors told me I had an extraordinary level of psychological insight and understanding, not to mention compassion, and yet I am still a lonely, frozen planet shooting through the interstellar void.

I could be your therapist. But I can’t be my own.

I hate these weeks with no therapy appointment.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.