Been thinking a lot about how to be today.

I am trying to find the door into reversing some of the social damage that has kept me back for all these fucking years. I want to heal and learn to be a part of things so I no longer feel like I am inherently excluded from everything. I am not sure what that would entail, so all I can do is feel my way to a solution.

And that takes time.

I am trying to be more social at school. But I don’t really know how. So I still feel like I am not truly welcome. It really seems like people would rather not be dealing with me. I feel like I am being obnoxious but I am too sweet and mild for anyone to get super pissed at me.

The thing is, I don’t know how to get into the conversation. Maybe I should just sit there and say nothing until someone talks to me, I dunno. I have trouble imagining that working. I am pretty sure that would result in me feeling more isolated than ever. Then I would have to leave… I can’t endure that. Being alone in a crowd is infinitely worse than just being alone, at least for me.

You can never be excluded and unworthy when you are alone.

But that still might be better overall than what I do now, which is staple myself into other people’s conversations. Just kinda barge in. And that’s definitely obnoxious bordering on rude. But at least it allows me to feel included like a real human being for a little while.

Then they turn back to the person they were actually talking to, and I am once more alone, unliked, and adrift, untethered.

Trying to fit in at school makes me feel like I am trying to shove my enormous mental and physical shelves through too small a door by sheer force of will. The hope is that whatever shape I take after being thusly compressed will be able to fit in for good, and it will all be worth it.

But it’s also possible that it will never work and I will only end up hurting myself.

I think that the harsh truth I may have to face is that even in a room full of nerdy writing students, I am a freak who doesn’t fit in because what he says is just too far off the beam for people to understand. I keep getting that “I have no idea what to even do with that” look, and that really hurts. It makes me feel like an alien. Like I am so strange people just ignore me, like I have a permanent Somebody Else’s Problem field.

IQ is a factor. It’s lonely at the top of the percentiles. Well, near it, anyhow. High up enough that it’s hard for people to relate to me, and vice versa. My thoughts don’t fit in their minds. It’s gotten bad enough that I have been seriously wondering whether I would be better off just being a sarcastic egotistical prick.

At least then people would have to deal with me.

My professors seem okay with me, but that’s par for the course. I’ve always got on better with the teachers than my fellow students. Not that they are super fond of me either. As usual, they are sort of afraid of me, I assume because of the obvious intelligence thing. A student like me is unpredictable, a real X factor, and that makes them nervous. They are afraid I will ask them a question they can’t answer and end up making them look bad in front of the rest. Or that I will unwittingly threadjack discussions (or outright kill them) by saying something so “out there” that it crashes people’s brains. Maybe even makes them feel stupid for not being able to keep up with me.

And nobody likes people who make them feel stupid, no matter how unintentional it is.

So maybe I should just own it already.Yeah I’m the smartest guy in the room wherever I go. Yes, my thinking is light years ahead of yours. It doesn’t make me look down on you like you’re a lesser being, but I am tired of assuming failure to get over is always all my fault. Maybe I should just cop a massive attitude and force the world to deal with me.

Or, and this is incredibly sad, maybe the only way I can truly relate to people is by being in charge. And even then, I would not be truly relating to them on an equal level. Being in charge would just make me feel useful and involved. I wouldn’t be relating to people as equals and really connecting with them emotionally.

I could lead them. Organize them. Inspire them. Take them places they never dreamed they could go.

But be one of them? Never.

Maybe the real problem is my still-frozen heart. In that state, I just don’t have access to whatever deep vein of unconscious empathy allows other people to fit in and make friends. People sense that about me, and it makes me seem not just alien but cold and aloof as well. Detached. Distant. Depressing.

That’s certainly how I feel a lot of the time. Like a planet too distant from the warming rays of the sun.

I’d really like to get out of my box now, please. No I don’t have the key. Do you have a hacksaw?

Ironically, I am fairly sure I can pitch ideas and such quite well. If it’s my idea, I can sell it, and well, impressing people who are more powerful than I am has never been hard for me.

I am the kind of guy who could write the movie, sell the movie, makes the movie, fill the theaters for the movie, promote the hell out of the movie…. then fail the after party.

Maybe that’s how a lot of people end up in leadership positions… by being unable to relate to people in a normal way.

It would explain a lot, wouldn’t it?

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.