Confession # 2 - Social Situations and Being Alone

Sorry for the small hiatus! It's been a busy couple of weeks for me. We'll just roll right along then. :)

As you might have already guessed, I am not your average college student, in a lot of ways. I don't drink at all, I've never smoked a cigarette, and I've never been to a party. I detest the way most of the people my age act. I don't really have a super busy social life...but the thing is, where most people my age would frown on that, I feel really good about it. That's the way I like it. I know I can make friends, but I just choose not to keep that many. I would prefer one solid, amazing relationship compared with a lot of acquaintances. We'll talk more about that in a later posting. 

Anyway, on the topic of my social life and being alone.... 

Like I said in my last post, us HSPs really like to have alone time when we are becoming overstimulated. For me, I like it most of the time. I like to meditate/reflect on things and be comfortable in my own surroundings. I like to be myself, which is hard for me when I'm out in public. That isn't to say that I'm not sincere or don't care; I do care about the people around me a lot. When I speak with them, I am genuine. Maybe sometimes more than I should be. The point is though, I have come to the realization that I am an incredibly odd person and a lot of people need to be "trained" in handling me and my personality. Similarly, I have to warm up to a lot of people to show them my true self, and only a few people know what that's like. Really, only those people who I feel completely comfortable around, including my mom, my boyfriend, and perhaps just one good friend, know my true self. The best example of this that I can think of is my sense of humor or my pirate's mouth. I say some pretty weird stuff sometimes, I can get really hyper, and I swear...a lot. I don't show a lot of people this side of me until the know me very very well. Some people call this communication theory, I just call it self control. I think I am just terrified of letting down my walls and letting people see my real self and being rejected. I get paranoid a lot in that sense, but that's for next week's posting. 

On that note, the actual confession bit of this post is this: when I am in a social situation where I have to interact with a lot of people at the same time (or even one person that I don't really get along with), I am counting down in my head to when I can go back to being alone. Small talk is hard for me, and sometimes I feel like I make people feel awkward because I leave so much silence in conversations (but silence is good in my opinion). Because I can sense they feel awkward, I start to feel awkward, and then I want to escape. It's a weird cycle that I try to deal with daily. I suppose for me, you can compare social situations to culture shock. It's just too much to deal with at once and I don't know how to handle it. 

So then I escape and get back to my alone time where I can process what has just happened, or meditate, or do something by myself. It's good for me. 

My best weekend plan is having a lot of time to craft or read or write or paint. People have learned not to invite me to things, I guess because it's rare that I agree to go (that culture shock thing again). Or maybe they just don't think to invite me, I'm not sure. Either way, I never really spend my weekends doing anything with anyone. In this case, alone time can become a really bad thing. When there is too much room to think, I start getting paranoid and self-conscious. I spend so much time alone and I am so bored that I feel incredibly helpless. I feel utterly alone with no one to turn to. Then I remember that I've created this for myself and I'm just left to my guilt. That sounds really emo...but I don't know any other way to explain it. My inner workings are really difficult to talk about.

Like I said earlier, most people my age would frown on this or call me pathetic. Most people would think I'm weird for being this way. But that's exactly it, and that's exactly the point I'm doing this blog. There's no getting around my weirdness, for other people or myself. People have thought I've been really weird my entire life. For me, sometimes I feel so trapped by the way my mind works, and sometimes it feels really liberating. This post is not one of those times when I feel liberated. I feel like a prisoner of sorts because my mental limitations restrict me from being one of those type-A personalities.

This has been a really short post, but I think that's all I have to say on the topic. Tune in next week for my rant about paranoia.