(no subject)
Apr. 28th, 2007 04:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elizabethSo, a couple of weeks ago, I emailed someone. I emailed someone whose journal I'd stumbled across from reading some quite good fic, and whose name I recognised as a fellow New Yorker, and who was ill, and who was complaining about feeling too dizzy to walk to the grocery store in Union Square. Which is three subway stops from my office. So I emailed, and said, hey, you don't know me, but I think you're nifty, and here, random feedback is never not awesome, right, and by the way, please don't take this as creepy and stalkerish and weird, but I'm pretty close to you, geographically, and it seems you're really having a hard few days of it, if you need someone to come around and help you out a bit, just ask. It took a few days for her to write back, which, duh, the poor woman was sick, and she was really sweet, saying pretty much, that's really generous of you, thanks, I can't actually answer your email right now 'cause I'm way too whacked out on drugs but I didn't want to let you think I was ignoring it, I'll talk to you soon, okay?, and I said, hey, no worries, I'm not a obligation, the offer's there if you need it, feel better soon.
And that was the last I've heard of it.
And the smart part of me knows there are ten thousand entirely plausible reasons that my email might have been way down on her list of priorities -- first she was sick, and then she was probably trying to catch up from being sick, and it's the end of the semester at Tisch, and she's moving, I think, pretty soon, and I know all this. But there's a part of me that...that thinks I did something. That I pushed too hard, or was offensive in some way, and that's the thought that, unsurprisingly, hurts most. Because I know full well that I can be careless with people, I can be awkward and unconventional in my dealings with people, I get it. I'm still shit at actually being around people, especially new people, but I'm a lot better than I used to be, and I don't do it deliberately. And when I'm actively trying to be good, to be someone people don't think is a freak, I'm decent at it. I'm never going to be the prom queen, I'm never going to be everyone's best friend, but I can be a decent person. I think. But if I managed, somehow, to piss someone off when I was trying to be nice...I don't mind telling you, that thought hurts like fuck.
I'm a little hurt that my offer was -- not quite spurned, that's not quite the word, but close enough for government work, I guess; I'm pretty disappointed that it looks like nothing is going to come of my attempt to be social and generous, that all the courage it took for me to send that initial e-mail went into a vacuum (I know, I'm hardly entitled to anything just because it was something that was hard for me to do, but I wish I had gotten something out of it); and I suspect that some part of me is reeling with the fresh realisation of how lonely I am. There is no one in my life to whom I can talk freely, face-to-face. There's no one here who knows all the parts of me, and likes me anyway, and it's okay if I don't think about it much. I can handle it, I can fracture myself up and show off multiple facets at once, I can do that. But god, having it thrown in my face, that I am just as lonely as I was in middle school, is tearing me up in ways I didn't expect it to. It doesn't catch me often anymore, but when it does, I can't breathe with it -- I thought I was done with this shit. I thought I had learned how to have friends, how to be a friend, and it took me years to learn it, I fucked up plenty along the way, but I thought I'd figured it out.
And then I went to England, and as much as I'm glad I went, I'm glad I did it, I wouldn't give up Dorian or [info]berne for anything, I would -- if I could erase those six, eight, howevermany, months of isolation and repression and tension, I would, because I went from there to Columbia, and oh god, I just lost control. I forgot that I wasn't who Godawful had forced me to be, I forgot that I was more than that, and it took me two fucking years to remember, and I don't think I remember what it feels like anymore not to be alone.
I'm groping my way back toward it now, I know I am, I'm trying so hard, but god, how hard can it be to have one fucking friend within a twenty-five mile radius of me? People do it every day, why is it so fucking hard for me, why can I not master the basics of it?
And that was the last I've heard of it.
And the smart part of me knows there are ten thousand entirely plausible reasons that my email might have been way down on her list of priorities -- first she was sick, and then she was probably trying to catch up from being sick, and it's the end of the semester at Tisch, and she's moving, I think, pretty soon, and I know all this. But there's a part of me that...that thinks I did something. That I pushed too hard, or was offensive in some way, and that's the thought that, unsurprisingly, hurts most. Because I know full well that I can be careless with people, I can be awkward and unconventional in my dealings with people, I get it. I'm still shit at actually being around people, especially new people, but I'm a lot better than I used to be, and I don't do it deliberately. And when I'm actively trying to be good, to be someone people don't think is a freak, I'm decent at it. I'm never going to be the prom queen, I'm never going to be everyone's best friend, but I can be a decent person. I think. But if I managed, somehow, to piss someone off when I was trying to be nice...I don't mind telling you, that thought hurts like fuck.
I'm a little hurt that my offer was -- not quite spurned, that's not quite the word, but close enough for government work, I guess; I'm pretty disappointed that it looks like nothing is going to come of my attempt to be social and generous, that all the courage it took for me to send that initial e-mail went into a vacuum (I know, I'm hardly entitled to anything just because it was something that was hard for me to do, but I wish I had gotten something out of it); and I suspect that some part of me is reeling with the fresh realisation of how lonely I am. There is no one in my life to whom I can talk freely, face-to-face. There's no one here who knows all the parts of me, and likes me anyway, and it's okay if I don't think about it much. I can handle it, I can fracture myself up and show off multiple facets at once, I can do that. But god, having it thrown in my face, that I am just as lonely as I was in middle school, is tearing me up in ways I didn't expect it to. It doesn't catch me often anymore, but when it does, I can't breathe with it -- I thought I was done with this shit. I thought I had learned how to have friends, how to be a friend, and it took me years to learn it, I fucked up plenty along the way, but I thought I'd figured it out.
And then I went to England, and as much as I'm glad I went, I'm glad I did it, I wouldn't give up Dorian or [info]berne for anything, I would -- if I could erase those six, eight, howevermany, months of isolation and repression and tension, I would, because I went from there to Columbia, and oh god, I just lost control. I forgot that I wasn't who Godawful had forced me to be, I forgot that I was more than that, and it took me two fucking years to remember, and I don't think I remember what it feels like anymore not to be alone.
I'm groping my way back toward it now, I know I am, I'm trying so hard, but god, how hard can it be to have one fucking friend within a twenty-five mile radius of me? People do it every day, why is it so fucking hard for me, why can I not master the basics of it?
Reposted from LJ, 20 March 2009
