I was snooping around here, and … well … I guess I’m a little befuddled right now. So pardon incoherence, this is one of my self-seeking-clarity posts, it is allowed to not make any sense. It’s a**move along, nothing to see here** kinda thing.

When I first read those posts, I was really irritated. I thought ‘not another one, though at least this one is funny’. But I have to admit, there’s something wrong with me thinking all of ‘them’ are not normal. See, when you walk into a room of fifty people, and 49 of them are insane, it’s time to consider whether perhaps it’s you that isn’t ‘normal’.

It is very easy for me to dismiss people that don’t see things the way I do. But that writes off the human race, since very few people think like me. It’s down to basic projection. I value honesty, openess and trust, self disclosure and cuddles. So I give what I would like to receive. And since few people function like I do, they can’t handle it. They enjoy it at first, because it is novel, it’s something they haven’t encountered before. But after a while, they feel imposed upon and smothered. They just can’t handle it.

I”ve been accused of putting people into little boxes and making assumptions about them. I never mean it as an offense, I believe everyone has their own social fingerprint. It’s just that my mind operates by breaking things down into workable bits before I analyse them in depth.

So my generalisations are only ever a starting point. They are never an end in itself. I will class you into male or female, introvert or extrovert, SJ or NT, geek or bully, then I will look at you as you, see how similar or different you are from others in the box, what makes you tick. The world is my lab, and you are all guinea pigs. But you know what, I like guinea pigs. They’re cute, and I like cute.

I’m very stubborn about being myself and speaking my mind, even when no one wants to listen. Sometimes, especially when no one wants to listen. I tell myself that I am unique and special to be this way, and that anyone that doesn’t agree can go … yes, that one.

But I have this … pattern. When I make new friends, especially guys [coz girls are really complex, they scare me!!], they find me interesting for a while, then they tune me out. Yes EB, I know what you said about generalising, but I can only base my assumptions on what I have experienced. I will agree, grudgingly, to be proved wrong.

So today, after reading that post and hearing from someone whose opinion I trust that it is all true, I got upset. Because I have done every one of the forbidden items on that list, and I still don’t see why I should stop doing it. To me, that equates pretending, playing a role, not being myself. Why should I be like everyone else?

In my little mind, people who think like that writer are a little … loopy, and I will find that special boy who is not. After all, I’m INFJ, we are apparently [and i have no proof of this] very rare, so naturally, the superbeing that can love a nut like us is equally rare, yes? Maybe so, but if I want to function in this here world, I need to pluck my head out of my … that one, and get with the programme. Either that or I need to stop being so shattered every time my beloved ones do ‘normal’ things.

When I like someone, I feel free around them. I speak uncensored. I say whatever comes into my head in the very moment that it does. People seem to like that at first, but then it gets pretty old pretty fast and they begin to ignore me. I find that I’m talking at them instead of talking to them. I don’t think it’s that they value me any less, they just get, you know, tired. Too much of anything is wearying. Plus, I’m giving them what I need, not what they need, so they’re getting nothing out of it and they start to stay away.

Thing is, if I could get a nice solid reason to stop saying all that idiot stuff I say, then I would. Seriously. I like things to make sense. My world does not compute otherwise. For example, I learnt from one of my angels that people simply do not like hearing the truth. The average person will tell you ‘be honest’ and then they will hate you for it. Hence ‘do i look fat?’

People will say ‘just be yourself’, until they see you actually being yourself. Hence the demise of marriage. Spouses let their guard down and ‘be themselves’ and the spousees simply can’t handle it, so they cheat or leave. My solution to that has been to expose my warts from day one so that if people are going to be scared away, it happens early.

That rarely works, because people are used to faking and putting up fronts, so they assume I’m doing it too. Meanwhile, I am thinking that I am being accepted for me, and getting more and more comfy, so that when it hits the person that I’m for real and they take off screaming, I get shellshocked.

To successfully interact with people, you have to give them what they want. I don’t mean giving in to peer pressure, I mean that if you want someone to talk to you, you have to talk about stuff they like. Sometimes that means pretending. Sometimes it means compartmentalizing, only showing them what is acceptable, what they can handle. I think that’s really really sad.

I’ve never interacted with people before, because I didn’t want to get hurt. I am a proverbial easy bruiser, and I have a phobia for pain that not even childbirth has cured.  Lately I’ve been doing more of that, meeting people and talking with them getting to know them. Strictly online of course, because I live in Dar and few people here make sense.

In a few weeks I’m going home, and I hope to meet some of my online friends for real. I’m pretty excited about it, because I really have not mingled before, and surprisingly, I didn’t feel particularly nervous. Until I read those posts. I know it’s a riddiculously whole lot to draw from something so little, but that’s how my mind works. Everything is linked. So if one brick gets dislodged, my whole system comes tumbling down.

Suubsequently, the more I mingle, the more I want to crawl back into my hermit cave. People are just too complicated. Dealing with them is way too much work. And it doesn’t even burn any calories. Ai !! The whole process of finding out what different people are interested in and engaging them takes a lot of effort, and sometimes it’s just plain boring. It is so much better to say I will stick to people who see things like I do, share my interests, my passions, my desires, but again, that pretty much writes off humanity.

I’d like to think there are people out there who can consistently enjoy the person that I am. So far, I have found two, and how I adore them. Thing is, they are both very … how you say … closed. They keep things in. So I don’t know how much I mean to them, or if I mean anything at all, and I’m the kind of person that needs to know that.

But I suppose the fact that they alone, of all my intimates, bear with me constantly, means they do care. Or maybe they just haven’t tired yet. Maybe they just hide their unease and wearidom better than everyone else. I hope they won’t tire of me soon. And I pray that I’m as big a support to them as they are to me, because each day I see my group of intimates shrink as more and more of my angels lose their will to fly. I guess I’ll never really know, because they can’t express themselves in a way that I can understand. I need to somehow learn their language.

I have often wondered why certain people are afraid of me, guys specifically, and why they keep running away once they get to know me. It occured to me very clearly today. It’s because I am a child. When people look at me, they see an alpha female, and that’s a pull factor. But once I speak, and they see my soft, unfiltered, unadulterated heart, speaking without thinking, flirting without knowing, teasing without meaning, they realise that I’m just a kid.

I suppose I’ve known that all along, but it’s never been this lucid in my mind. I am me. I can pretend to be all grown up, or I can wallow in my childhood and find someone fun to play with, it’s entirely up to me. But when it comes to my dear ones, if I want to be with them at all, I have to learn to reach them at their levels. That means I need to learn smalltalk and boytalk and girltalk, because in this world of grown ups, very few people want to play.

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