>>12377Well, there are a few questions I don't know the answers to when it comes to myself. Of course I learn new things and can close some questions, but some are constant.
I actually went to a therapist as a kid after I took part in a brawl and accidentally hurt someone really bad, and I remember her asking me all sorts of uncomfortable questions. Ultimately, what was the verdict by the end of our year of therapy? "It'll get better in high school. It'll be even better at university."
When I had to visit a therapist in high school for another unfortunate social accident I had with someone, they just looked at my record and told me to beat it, there's nothing to be learned here.
Even then, I had those sessions because they were mandatory. My mother would probably be sad if I went to a therapist. She periodically reminds me not to get depression. Of course I tried to talk to her about my problems, my feelings of being inadequate, but if it's not met with being called an idiot, it ends with a laugh.
The central problem that honestly bothers me the most is how I do not seem to be able to form "deep" relationships in a sense. People think of me as a workaholic who leads no personal life. Which I guess is true. "Ernst, you're the academic equivalent of a mule!"
I'm good at forming collegial relations with people. We do similar things at a similar place. It never turns into "Let's see a movie at the weekend" for some reason.
I cannot seem to build "Friendships" with people I meet on a day-to-day basis. I don't know if going out drinking with online friends I talk with every day basically as proper friendship. Maybe friendship is different nowadays thanks to the net.
I'd like to say that I'm not socially inept. I'm very competent verbally if I can believe people, so it's not an issue of tools. There's some kind of colossal fuck-up at a framework level, and I think I can blame the two times I almost got made into a delinquent during my schooling, which in the end put me off from a career in being a bouncer, but it made me retreat to the Citadel of my soul to such a degree that nobody even thinks to visit me any more, because ultimately, focusing on erudition and my studies was in my head, the safest way to make me seem harmless.
You could probably fill an entire novella with episodes of my life that I think contributed to my unbalanced or "deformed" personality. That my personality feels like it's a wave in a box, or a pendulum. That I take everything seriously, while also being unable to pass up on making a joke, that I craw to be with people, but can't help but be bored to tears by what the average person does, that I think I get nothing done yet I look down on basically everyone else, that people think I'm a workaholic yet I probably get less done than most of them. Or is that just my feeling of inadequacy speaking to my own unreasonable expectations?
If life were a novel, me assembling these facts, laying them out and then trying to resolve these contradictions within me would lead somewhere. But repeatedly I have to arrive at the conclusion that life is not like a novel, and that things happen nigh meaninglessly, the best I can do is tie them together to form the prettiest bouquet possible to impress people around me. Get a combo.
Most of this is probably just meaningless noise on my part. I could go to a therapist but I'm a cheapskate, my schedule is full, it's too expensive, and my mother would be disappointed that her "gifted" son going to a good university is "mentally ill".
As much as I like to ignore my issues in favour of "just carrying on", I actually do think about it beyond my self-flagellating proclamations of being in despair saying it's all meaningless.
There we are, I'm feeling sad again. Not gonna cry, but if I think about this any more I'm probably gonna.