We all have had the argument with friend or family that starts with something minor. A criticism someone asserts out of the blue over something rude you did, something that, perhaps, didn't even involve them, but they've made a judgment based on it. You try to explain, because you first think, surely, they couldn't have all the details right.
In this case, after I made sure she had all the details right, her opinion is unchanged. Now, when that happened, I could handle it. Yes, I think, but don't say, maybe that was gauche and maybe I shouldn't have done that. I won't do it like that again, but it was also a really small thing.
However, I never get to say this, because while I was in the fact-checking stage of it, she brought up, just casually, much larger issues I know she's been holding in, and the subject was an entry point for her to express those. These are things that I can't do anything about, not even after seeing therapists and psychiatrists over thirty years. Personality traits that are more like symptoms of mental illness than any preference I have.
Let me explain one of these: hiding on my computer away from people. I played alone a lot as a kid. So much so, my mother forced me to play with my brother. I can't tell you how much anxiety and anger I felt over that. I used to make up the stupidest games for him, just so he'd stop wanting to play with me. Not that I didn't like my brother either. I just needed to play alone at that time. I craved being alone the way an alcoholic craves vodka. The games I played, I couldn't even describe them to people. Just knowing people noticed me as I played them embarrassed and terrified me.
(Now, I did also play with other kids, but I spent a great and growing amount of my time solitary.)
There were other bizarre fears. Like I hated to go to the barber. I just despised it. Not because long hair was in (though I pretended that was the reason later) but just because I didn't like him behind me touching me on the head. Especially with the sound of the scissors. I spent my time in the barber chair holding back panic attacks. I'd leave with my clothes soaked in sweat.
I'm not trying to milk sympathy about this. I'm just saying my tendency to isolate myself is a behavior from childhood, probably in my genes, and it came with other peculiar behaviors. I've had it as long as I remember. It's not something I can do anything about. I know it's a symptom either of Asperger's or a personality disorder. For reasons I give below, I'll probably never know which.
I have tried to remedy it. I knew midway through adolescence that I had to do something about it. So, I tried to do more with people. I joined theater and cross-country in junior year high school. Both were disastrous setbacks. I was way too under-socialized by then. I told my parents I needed to see a counselor or something, and the response could be summed up with "Shrinks are phoney. Pray to the Virgin Mary." My mother had enough problems with her own psychosis, and by that I mean she was clinically psychotic and she felt the shrinks had screwed her over. Meanwhile, my father acted annoyed at the very thought. In hindsight, I think he didn't want to face failure, that my needing help reflected badly on him, though my problem wasn't his fault, wasn't his failure to commit, but it was certainly his failure to ignore my pleas and act like nothing was wrong. I found my own counselor through asking a kind girl I knew. He was a failed Catholic Brother and member of the Transactional Analysis cult, the Parent-Adult-Child nonsense, though it didn't seem like bullshit then. I was earnest to try anything.
He was a rank amateur, my association with him turned into a worse fiasco than anything in my life previously, while my parents pretended to support me, ad hoc. The state didn't require counselors to be certified then. I told them I was seeing him, that he was letting me pay for the sessions by working around his house. They didn't ask any questions about him, didn't check anything.
He and his TA books gave completely the wrong advice for an under-socialized kid trying to survive high school and college. Remember hitting the pillow when you're angry, and how they found later that it aggravated anger? Things like that. As I got worse, my parents suddenly thought he was wonderful and sent tons of insurance money his way as he retroactively added sessions we ever had to the record . He was phony, fraudulent, exploitative, unethical and greedy, and really didn't care about the desperate adolescents he saw. When none of his bullshit worked, he blamed me, and finally refused to see me. Stung, I
left him feeling more lost and worse about myself when I arrived.
However, I will say in his favor, he never molested me. For a kid looking for help without parental assistance, it could have ended far worse.
Remember the beginning of The Sixth Sense? The guy who shot Malcolm "Bruce Willis" Crowe, his old, failed, counselor? I have to admit identifying with that guy. I'd have shown up in ninja gear instead of skivvies, though. I pride myself that my counselor was far worse, but I came out better than Dr. Crowe's patient. My resentment is mollified by sympathy. My counselor ran his business out of the house. So, I knew his family, too. I found out his wife and son, then a teenager, died in traffic accident. That's not a grief I would wish on anybody.
So, late in adulthood, somehow I always spend most my day alone, much more so than I did as a child. It's not the way I prefer it. No, I am very lonely. But when I'm by myself concentrating on something, time just flies by, with no time left for anything social. It's the one thing I wish I could change, something I'm still trying to change, but every effort to do so has failed. Writing is perfect for me, though, but I have to temper the isolation if I'm going to survive.
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