Isolation

Sometimes, I am on a search for what really matters in life. Where should I put the basis of most of my enjoyment? What should I actively look forward to?

I used to look forward all the time to eating, back when I was young and horribly depressed. Eating can be a very positive experience. However, eat too much and you become fat. And it's hard to live with yourself when you are fat, with the way people treat you and shit. Which is why you shouldn't really look forward at all to eating, unless you are really hungry. If you're not hungry, you shouldn't even think about food.

I used to look forward to the effects of my drugs, mainly the Adderall. But, like I've stated in a previous blog entry, it doesn't really have that effect any more. Caffeine still has an effect on me. Nicotine still has an effect on me. Maybe I should look forward to those things.

I enjoy working, and getting things done, and making progress with my projects. I got high off productivity. This high is even better than an Adderall high. Sure, the Adderall high is full of more fake, artificial sugary happy sweetness, but a productivity high actually means something. When it's gone, it's not really gone, because I still accomplished the work. What do I have to show for an Adderall high, after it is all done? Absolutely nothing. That is, unless the increased motivation from the Adderall high led me to accomplish something. But a lot of times, I will just sit and think on it. Which is utterly unproductive. So yeah, in a way it's better it doesn't make me high anymore.

What I really think is worth my time to be obsessed over, is social interactions. Talking to different people. Sometimes, I talk to people about my work and computers. The thing is, I don't know a whole lot of different stuff about computers, so to avoid exposing my ignorance, these conversations have to be brief, if I'm talking to someone who majored in computer science. I have only ever taken a couple of computer science classes. I learned programming in high school. I learned Visual Basic, which is supposed to be easy to learn and use, but honestly, now that I have pretty much got down Objective C, Objective C is no harder than Basic. I could talk on and on about the mechanics of programming, like debugging. All the time you spend single stepping through code, trying to track down the bug, and that feeling of satisfaction when you finally catch it. But really, people don't really talk about that, at least not with me. So I talk about my projects. Anyway.

So, I have in my mind that social interaction would be the most rewarding thing. But I spend almost all my time alone. I don't go out much anymore. There was a period of time last year when I was going out a lot. I'm not really all that good at social interaction, though I am a million times better than I used to be.

The thing that bothers me a lot is how I went through junior high and high school, all the time doing the bare minimum when it came to social interaction. I can't tell you how much I regret that, and how much it bothers me now. I would really like to be part of a group of friends. But I don't have that. I have random friends here and there. I have friends from Innercept. That's the thing, as much as I bitched and moaned about how much I hated Innercept, and how horrible it was, most of the people I call my real friends now, are people I met at Innercept. At Innercept, I kind of did have a group of girl friends.

I sometimes get down, like I did just last night, thinking about all the people I know who don't like me. Bridges I've burned, mostly, if not always, from drinking too much alcohol. But then I think of all the people who really, really like me, like certain staff members from Innercept. And I remember how I could just talk to staff so easily, and how now when I talk to people, I struggle, because I spend so much time alone. I remember Erik. And how as much as some people don't like him, he was someone who I could actually really talk to, about whatever was on my mind. And how throughout the day, we would text back and forth constantly.

The thing about social interaction, it keeps the mental illness in check. Like, the small, quirky symptoms I have. Like the talking to myself, about myself, from the perspective of someone else. But, recently I've stopped doing that. Which makes me feel like I am doing better.

So all in all, I'm not doing horribly. And I'm not constantly tortured anymore, tortured by these thoughts that rip me inside out. That went away last year, oddly enough, from the experience of again being delusional. In a way, that made me feel a lot better, and I'm no longer all upset because certain people unfriended me. Like it used to really bother me that one particular person did. But now I don't even care. Who cares? Why do I get myself so upset over these things? And I'm no longer all embarrassed about certain particular things, like things I said to this one guy, because really, what does it matter? I've moved on. That whole situation, which used to tear me inside out, doesn't hurt anymore. It don't hurt no more.

But the social isolation is what's killing me right now.