At times, I will have YouTube running in the background, sometimes playing music, sometimes showing various news clips, and sometimes showing things such as videos from the Royal Institute or other groups dealing with science, maths, and other topics. Since the latter ones are often not on a playlist, and YouTube just starts showing them randomly, some interesting things can come up (this also works for music videos as well… I have made two great discoveries this past few months this way). Yesterday, YouTube headed over into TED videos, which can be quite interesting. There are folks giving talks such as ones on various computer topics, or the talk given by Nick Hanauer entitled “Beware, fellow plutocrats, the pitchforks are coming” (or his original “banned” talk).
This one came up yesterday, and I actually had to stop. Along with a post which showed up in my FB memories, it really hits home, where home is ground zero for Tsar Bomba.
Why did the video and the post hit that hard? It is because I am so familiar with being lonely… it probably is one of the words which can sum up my life. As I said in a previous post, in school I found myself more often than not feeling excluded by my peers throughout my elementary and high school years, left to read a book, wonder off someplace to sit, etc. during recess, and often being the last one picked for team activities. Would they remember it that way? I seriously doubt it. During the elementary school years, the number of people I considered as treating me as a friend could be counted on one hand, with my thumb left over. It expanded somewhat in high school, but more often than not, it felt more like just being someone in their class, or a friend of their friend, rather than an actual friend. And this trend continued to a large degree through college and even into adulthood. I have gone through periods where, if not for my parents when I was living with them, or if not for one person at other times, I too feel that weeks could have gone by without being missed, as she says in the first minute. Indeed, there have been times I think it could have been a month or more. And while she talks about withdrawing, with me, it is more fleeing from crowds, particularly when stressed/depressed. In college, outside of hockey games, which even at Ohio State saw crowds less than 1000, I stayed clear of sports events. I never went to the bars, etc. Even on my birthdays (yes, birthdays) when I became legally able to drink, I stayed clear of the crowds, instead choosing to spend the evening ice skating. And I was quite happy to avoid the crushing crowds, overwhelming noise, smoke and other assaults on my senses. Except for SCA events, some conventions (either professional or SciFi/gaming/CosPlay cons, where I can immerse myself in one of my geeky distractions), and a very few exceptions over the years, I have avoided crowds. I would rather spend my time with a small group, clearly able to hear discussions, and to be intimate with friends.
In more recent years, while dealing with an abusive marriage which was in itself a major isolating factor, I dealt with my the decline of my father, where his days had been reduced to going into town, sitting in the VFW, Legion, or similar location, nursing a drink for hours, grabbing food, then going home to be by himself. And between the looming divorce, losing Dad, having my closest friend, who helped me realize that my marriage was abusive, murdered by her husband, and all… I found out more about myself than I had in the previous four decades. I discovered my high functioning autism (HFA, aka Asperger’s), which caused me to go non-verbal and rocking while being verbally assaulted. And with that, I discovered my lifelong depression, my near phobia of ending up like Dad was those final years, and so much more. It did not help that my second marriage had started out with lots of NRE, a partner who was so impatient to get married and have kids (to the point where she overcame my being quite satisfied with just the daughter I already had), and all. And after repeated assurances that I was “the one” rather than a passing phase regardless of her prior relationships being almost exclusively with other women, getting married, two miscarriages, and her essentially pushing me out of her life to be with another woman, the fear of being like Dad became even closer to being a phobia. But sadly, I more and more often find myself seeing my situation like being in a spacesuit, floating adrift and losing sight of my place of warmth, safely, and all that goes with it. And this is even considering the fact that my daughter and her fiancee live here with me. Sleeping schedules are out of sync, meals are fix your own due to schedules and her having more and more of a life of her own, and things I mention needing from the store, such as things for lunch, being repeatedly forgotten even when mentioned shortly before they leave the house. And social media… more and more, I have found even my closest friends less and less frequently saying “Hi” online, seeing how I am doing, etc., and going weeks and weeks without even responding, liking posts about things we love in common, etc. And then, lots of job applications seemingly going straight to /dev/null (the bit bucket), and this coming along… and I find myself wondering what the future holds. Do I have a way to reach warmth and safety again? Or am I to disappear into the darkness, to become a forgotten memory, no different than the bits of rocks, ice and gas around the universe, long before I should.