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cosmolinguistIn the No-Internet saga, today we were supposed to get a replacement 4G hub for the faulty one we were offered last Friday to tide us over until they can actually fix our broadband sometime this month.
But we didn't; the DPD delivery driver thought he was swapping ours for a new one but Andrew thought we weren't supposed to be sending ours back since it's so broken and when the guy opened the bag he thought the new one was in...it was in fact empty. It was like a rubbish magic trick.
Not much to report anyway. My brain is being very bad to me. My friends' reactions to me on social media are somehow surprising me, feeling inadequate, begrudging, or somehow lacking? I'm certain they're just putting up with me and don't like me. I recognized starting to feel like this with that former-WI nonsense the other week (and, looking at that entry again, I see it's also the day I ran into Stuart which sent my emotional reactions haywire in a different direction but probably didn't help with this feeling), and since then I've gotten rid of another source of interactions that were reminding me of the times in school when I had no friends or when I clung desperately to people who weren't really friends with me...a fact which was occasionally made very obvious to me but which mostly I tried to ignore because my other option was facing up to this cognitive dissonance.
The memories feel very close to the surface now but really, it couldn't be further from the truth. Not only am I confident I now have more and better friends and found-family than I ever have in my life, but just yesterday a bunch of people came out of the woodwork to tell me that they'd seen me on TV, surprising me in some cases because I was sure they were people I couldn't possibly have left an impression on, even enough for them to recognize me on the news. And I'm wrong so there! But where normally I feel like that kind of thing would not just cheer me up but dispel these particular kinds of demons about how people are just barely tolerating me, this time neither has really happened.
The demons have survived, even fed off, my earlier attempts to kill them. The other day, when I didn't even think I was doing that bad, a meme was going around like "tell me what you think I'm good at, the answers will surprise me!" But I was more surprised, and dismayed, that I seemed to feel significantly worse afterwards. That kind of stuff usually perks me right up! I've also found sharing selfies hasn't helped me feel any better about myself...which again is the opposite of usual.
I imagine it's, as well as triggered by those other things, just the long-term effects of not seeing any of my friends for the last three months and just feeling a little adrift without all those little interactions and reinforcements. I haven't had so little contact with people of my own choosing since I was a teenager, which probably isn't helping with the flashback feeling I'm kinda getting: since then I have always had proper friends and reasonable amounts of contact with them. Maybe this is just another bad thing the pandemic is dredged up: the summer vacations where I had nothing to do, no one to see and no idea what paradigm shift was ahead of me...at least then it was just another school year, now it's...well, I don't even know how to describe it. But those probably felt as scary and impossible at the time as emerging from uni into the job market does now.
Knowing that there are reasons, personal and global, for why I might be feeling extra lonely at the moment and unsatisfied with the social life I do have is probably better than not having any idea why I'm feeling so listless. But knowing doesn't make it go away, and I just want this itchy terrible feeling of being stuck in a nowhere place to go the fuck away.
But we didn't; the DPD delivery driver thought he was swapping ours for a new one but Andrew thought we weren't supposed to be sending ours back since it's so broken and when the guy opened the bag he thought the new one was in...it was in fact empty. It was like a rubbish magic trick.
Not much to report anyway. My brain is being very bad to me. My friends' reactions to me on social media are somehow surprising me, feeling inadequate, begrudging, or somehow lacking? I'm certain they're just putting up with me and don't like me. I recognized starting to feel like this with that former-WI nonsense the other week (and, looking at that entry again, I see it's also the day I ran into Stuart which sent my emotional reactions haywire in a different direction but probably didn't help with this feeling), and since then I've gotten rid of another source of interactions that were reminding me of the times in school when I had no friends or when I clung desperately to people who weren't really friends with me...a fact which was occasionally made very obvious to me but which mostly I tried to ignore because my other option was facing up to this cognitive dissonance.
The memories feel very close to the surface now but really, it couldn't be further from the truth. Not only am I confident I now have more and better friends and found-family than I ever have in my life, but just yesterday a bunch of people came out of the woodwork to tell me that they'd seen me on TV, surprising me in some cases because I was sure they were people I couldn't possibly have left an impression on, even enough for them to recognize me on the news. And I'm wrong so there! But where normally I feel like that kind of thing would not just cheer me up but dispel these particular kinds of demons about how people are just barely tolerating me, this time neither has really happened.
The demons have survived, even fed off, my earlier attempts to kill them. The other day, when I didn't even think I was doing that bad, a meme was going around like "tell me what you think I'm good at, the answers will surprise me!" But I was more surprised, and dismayed, that I seemed to feel significantly worse afterwards. That kind of stuff usually perks me right up! I've also found sharing selfies hasn't helped me feel any better about myself...which again is the opposite of usual.
I imagine it's, as well as triggered by those other things, just the long-term effects of not seeing any of my friends for the last three months and just feeling a little adrift without all those little interactions and reinforcements. I haven't had so little contact with people of my own choosing since I was a teenager, which probably isn't helping with the flashback feeling I'm kinda getting: since then I have always had proper friends and reasonable amounts of contact with them. Maybe this is just another bad thing the pandemic is dredged up: the summer vacations where I had nothing to do, no one to see and no idea what paradigm shift was ahead of me...at least then it was just another school year, now it's...well, I don't even know how to describe it. But those probably felt as scary and impossible at the time as emerging from uni into the job market does now.
Knowing that there are reasons, personal and global, for why I might be feeling extra lonely at the moment and unsatisfied with the social life I do have is probably better than not having any idea why I'm feeling so listless. But knowing doesn't make it go away, and I just want this itchy terrible feeling of being stuck in a nowhere place to go the fuck away.
(no subject)
Date: 2020-06-23 07:22 pm (UTC)I'm starting to get that itchy feeling of being stuck too, it is not fun and I'm very sorry to hear you're suffering it.
I hope your brain weasels ease off soon, inflicting teenage flashbacks on you is just mean, what's going on now is quite enough to deal with without reminding you of pain gone by.
(no subject)
Date: 2020-06-24 07:59 am (UTC)I'm sorry you're feeling this way too. Hopefully we'll all be doing better soon.
(no subject)
Date: 2020-06-24 12:25 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2020-06-24 08:00 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2020-06-24 08:25 am (UTC)So, offering something a bit more practical - would you like to meet up again on Thursday for a socially distanced walk? Or a different day if that works better?
(no subject)
Date: 2020-06-24 08:53 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2020-06-24 03:00 pm (UTC)I was talking to someone about exactly this a couple of days ago, saying it feels like being put back into adolescence and that isolation from my people and community and ways of being. It's incredibly hard and painful and full of reminders of places we used to be. Is there any possibility of having some socially distanced time with Stuart (or anyone else) in park or similar? Just some solid time together to refill your reserves of cope and reorientate yourself to the life that is waiting for you again when this is over?
(no subject)
Date: 2020-06-24 03:46 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2020-06-25 07:28 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2020-06-24 09:48 pm (UTC)(It’s hard to feel good about yourself when you’re casually treated like crap by the company you’ve been paying good money to for internet access, which is fucking vital right now.)