I often find myself making rambling introspective posts late at night, then deleting them. I'm never sure why, I guess it'd be for fear of criticism, but the truth of the matter is, I don't know what criticism would come of it. After all, even friends disagree, and when posts get horribly introspective or philosophical, most people debate, or joke, or just ignore it.
I reread over my previous post, and I realize what was getting to me. I had recent read, in one of my late-night wikipedia spirals, an article on hikikomori. While I found it interesting, it planted a seed of worry in my mind. While I do not fit the definition as given, I spend a lot of time without others. The internet helps, but it worries me. I sometimes wonder at night if I have any social connections. Though, to be fair, I also sometimes wonder at night about how my life would be improved with the ability to set fire to things by willing it, so I don't place a great deal of stock in that.
I suppose this is anxiety of a sorts. While being eighteen meant nothing to me, and even my upcoming birthday in six days likewise is doing nearly nothing for me, aside from some strange kind of anticipation of the obligitory amusing-followed-by-awkward-moments with mum starting with "happy birthday!" and ending usually somewhere between, "we'll discuss any kind of present, uh, next check, alright?" and "*sob* I wish I could have been a better parent" depending on if my she feels like sugarcoating or just being brutal with herself. I could take that caustic outlook a step further and point out that birthdays really have meant nothing to me since about the age of thirteen as long as someone acknowledged what day it was, and the fact that lament is invariably how bad of a parent
she is makes me wonder how much of this is for my sake, but this is my mum, and if someone else says something bad about her so help me science I'll be digging teeth and bone fragments out of my hands, so badmouthing her myself feels hypocritical and guilty.
...The point that paragraph was originally trying to make is that I'm left wondering how heavily my naturally introverted nature is being amplified by the fact that I'm approaching the big changing point in my life, and nervous as all hell about it. The fact that all of my offline friends have either made the jump in some fashion and had prepared so much it felt like second nature, or they had run screaming from the challenge and act like the day isn't ever coming, makes this worse.
I've often been told I'm brilliant, when people are trying to think of some kind of compliment they can give me. The truth of the matter is, I'm just very well read, and very good at making intuitive leaps from factual basis. Maybe that is intelligence, and I do just have shitty self esteem issues like I joke about having, I don't know, and if you think I'm finishing for a compliment then you know less than I do. As it is, my main approach - to be honest, my only approach, is worthless here. There's nothing I can make a decent comparison to, to my knowledge. There aren't reading materials for the subject (though I admit "So You've Decided To Over-Analyze Every Aspect Of Your Life To The Point Of Recursive Paranoid Rethinking And Social Paralysis" is strangely appealing for a book title), and I'm left wondering if indeed any experience could be of help. Making another intuitive leap here; this is like losing my virginity, my first hangover, my first broken bone, and a lot of other milestones that people told me about, joked with me about, even bonded with me over, and then I went and had my version and nothing anyone said helped except maybe some advice about dealing with pain, or brands of rubbers.
...I think I just said "I'm nervous about the future and don't know how to prepare on an emotional level for the massive changes I'm so anxiously seeking for a year from now" in the most backwards and convoluted way ever. At least the stories will be good fun when they're had.
And then I go and read a friend's journal, who's a friend in the loosest sense of the word, someone who I moved through the same social circles as online in a massive interactive forum and we acknowledged one another to exist just about long enough to trade names and user handles... and she's basically dealing with the same emotions on a similar subject in a different life in her own way. That's a comforting enough thought to go try and sleep on.
Tags: change, emotional shit, real life
Current Location: haus
resonance: 
contemplative
Music: rain outside
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