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less charming and more strange than your average blog
October 03, 2003
Lost in space
Sometimes I look at the people around me and I wonder if I'm not from around here and I just don't know it. And by "not from here," I mean "not from Earth," because I haven't anywhere on the planet yet where I didn't feel instant dislike or alienation from most of the population. I'm not saying this general dislike applies to everyone, but it does seem to take me an inordinate amount of time to find a single person whose mouth I don't feel like wiring shut within the first five minutes of hearing them speak. Even if it's not to me. Am I the only person who feels this way? Today, it seems like it.
Just because I refuse to stop talking about the brilliance of Lost in Translation 24 hours a day for the rest of my life, I think part of the reason I felt so overwhelmed after the movie is because it didn't just capture how lonely and lost you can feel in a foreign country -- it captured something very close to how I feel all the time. Maybe what I'm mistaking for simple dislike is in fact the feeling that I have nothing in common with 99% of the human race. And it's so silly to say that, because I have so much in common with so many people, but the theoretical connection I believe I ought to have with people like me never seems to follow through. What ends up happening is a periodic series of trial friendships that seem to end as soon as I stop worrying and try to be myself.
Sometimes I think I lack some special instinct for holding part of yourself back from someone in the early stages of knowing someone, being more selective about the parts of yourself you reveal to them, pretending to be a certain kind of person so that they'll like you, until some unspecified point where you can finally stop this silly pretending and they really do like you. Sometimes I think I simply never learned this particular skill, and that's why I'm struggling so hard to make a human connection in this sea of people who are, after all, my peers.
Or maybe my expectations are too high. After all, in some friendships, the pretending never stops. Plenty of people have acquaintances that they talk to all the time, but never traverse into "close friend" territory with. I think, What's the point of having a friend if they're not a close friend? Then I think, So I don't feel the way I do now.
Today alone, I've encountered hundreds of people on campus, and I see members of another species who speak some secret language I understand, but can't comprehend. I think, What's wrong with all of you? Then I think, What's wrong with me?
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Just because I refuse to stop talking about the brilliance of Lost in Translation 24 hours a day for the rest of my life, I think part of the reason I felt so overwhelmed after the movie is because it didn't just capture how lonely and lost you can feel in a foreign country -- it captured something very close to how I feel all the time. Maybe what I'm mistaking for simple dislike is in fact the feeling that I have nothing in common with 99% of the human race. And it's so silly to say that, because I have so much in common with so many people, but the theoretical connection I believe I ought to have with people like me never seems to follow through. What ends up happening is a periodic series of trial friendships that seem to end as soon as I stop worrying and try to be myself.
Sometimes I think I lack some special instinct for holding part of yourself back from someone in the early stages of knowing someone, being more selective about the parts of yourself you reveal to them, pretending to be a certain kind of person so that they'll like you, until some unspecified point where you can finally stop this silly pretending and they really do like you. Sometimes I think I simply never learned this particular skill, and that's why I'm struggling so hard to make a human connection in this sea of people who are, after all, my peers.
Or maybe my expectations are too high. After all, in some friendships, the pretending never stops. Plenty of people have acquaintances that they talk to all the time, but never traverse into "close friend" territory with. I think, What's the point of having a friend if they're not a close friend? Then I think, So I don't feel the way I do now.
Today alone, I've encountered hundreds of people on campus, and I see members of another species who speak some secret language I understand, but can't comprehend. I think, What's wrong with all of you? Then I think, What's wrong with me?
