Post by yamara34 on Mar 4, 2011 1:45:43 GMT -5
Gosh, this forum reminds me not only of the pre-Facebook days, but the pre-Livejournal days.
I used to have a Livejournal, way back. What am I saying? I finally quit Livejournal this year, but I'd been trailing off using it for a long time, at least as a public forum. I used it semi-privately for ages, except for fanfiction posts/pop culture things.
This place - its format - reminds me of the Xena board I used to go to when I was very, very young. I forget, exactly, how people socialized on old-style message boards. While I was learning how you socialize on an old-style message board, I wish, now, that I had been learning how to socialize outside, IRL.
But then again, I'm not sure I'm in the right place, here. I found this site when I was looking for advice on how to improve my startlingly lacking social skills - I found an advice site that linked here. But back when I was a kid, when my parents were blind to my crippling Internet addiction, I spent the school years fairly social. It was the summers I withdrew into myself, and even the relationships I formed online were fleeting. The only time I felt like part of a community was that long-ago, old-style Xena message board. And even then, it was adults from Australia, California, England, New York - and me and one other 13 year old they just tried to keep the guys from saying inappropriate things to. All the same, despite the fact she "didn't believe in dinosaurs," they listened to her more. I would make posts so ignorant I started a fight, and after that was reluctant to say much beyond a silly quote or joke. That was over a decade ago...I remember I left when I left for Livejournal.
Anyway, then the fall would come, and drama/music was a lifeline for me as a teenager. When I went up to the high school, it was like real life suddenly came crashing back onto me in full force. My overprotective parents didn't really appreciate it, but they had to let me stay out and go out with people who got their driving licenses, because I had joined the drama club and two choirs, and a rather strange little clique of people I would go on trips with and see almost every weekend. I even had a love life, but if anything, it was full of drama and heartache. As if an absent birth mother, who then passed away, hadn't screwed me up enough: 16-year-old Yamara34? You do not date people from your own clique. That's how you lose the entire clique when it doesn't work out.
It was probably a mistake to apply to and attend a HUGE undergraduate university. The biggest in the state. That's what I did, though, and while I drifted through cliques of people, and many lovers, I never taught myself or bothered to try and figure out how to make female friends - I mean, I would love male friends too; a few old lovers became my friends, but that's so rare for that to happen - infatuation is passionate and fleeting, with me - but other women, it's always been hard for me to figure out how, after high school, to meet other women. I'm like Paul Rudd in that movie "I Love You Man," except I'm the opposite gender. I'm even more awkward around other women than I am around men, as I've stated.
I suppose maybe I'm in the wrong place, because I'm not shy and I don't have anxiety, at least, not very strongly, but I am, really. Shy. Even online. Even on Livejournal, when the opportunity arose to share my fanfiction (it's a huge element of participatory fandom culture where you, you know, write your own script for an existing TV show, for example, except in regular prose). I would get the physical symptoms of anxiety sitting in my own bedroom, on my own computer, talking to people on the Internet I would never meet! It flabbergasts me to this day how I met the men I did fall in love and into friendships with during college. I suppose it was from classes, from work, from across the hall. Now, with people moved away across the country, some of them across the world, I have the opportunity to meet new people, new women AND men, and even when my friends introduce me to THEIR friends, I sort of sabotage it. Not even in any kind of hostile way, but just by NOT going out, by not calling up people or emailing them, by sort of just staying on my own, just around my own relatives, just sort of...by myself.
I don't know if that's remotely the same as being anxious or shy. Maybe it's being lazy.
Tonight I went out to meet some people from online for the first time, but I hadn't talked to them before, and it was fun, yes, but I wonder if maybe I'm just so rusty there's no point bothering. But there IS, of course. If I had fun, it shows I could go do it again, and it shows there's this whole part of my life I'm missing out on: being with other people, in whatever capacity. With other women. Just chatting.
I've tried to drag myself around the world when I had the opportunity - England, Ireland, Scotland, Europe. Around America. I would love to see more someday. Australia, Asia, South America. But I don't know. I'm not the type. It's like I see the photos and read the stories, but you get me there, and I fall apart wanting to go home. I sort of wish I was that globetrekker type. Outgoing and extroverted. I remember getting REALLY drunk with a Canadian girl and a Texan boy in Seville, Spain, and he started to psychoanalyze me. He gave me a little credit for hopping on a plane to Spain (for living in England for a year), but that I had a lot to work on. A LOT.
Okay, I'm not sure if I completely broke every rule of this Diary thing, but...
I'm tempted to hit Post Message anyway...
I used to have a Livejournal, way back. What am I saying? I finally quit Livejournal this year, but I'd been trailing off using it for a long time, at least as a public forum. I used it semi-privately for ages, except for fanfiction posts/pop culture things.
This place - its format - reminds me of the Xena board I used to go to when I was very, very young. I forget, exactly, how people socialized on old-style message boards. While I was learning how you socialize on an old-style message board, I wish, now, that I had been learning how to socialize outside, IRL.
But then again, I'm not sure I'm in the right place, here. I found this site when I was looking for advice on how to improve my startlingly lacking social skills - I found an advice site that linked here. But back when I was a kid, when my parents were blind to my crippling Internet addiction, I spent the school years fairly social. It was the summers I withdrew into myself, and even the relationships I formed online were fleeting. The only time I felt like part of a community was that long-ago, old-style Xena message board. And even then, it was adults from Australia, California, England, New York - and me and one other 13 year old they just tried to keep the guys from saying inappropriate things to. All the same, despite the fact she "didn't believe in dinosaurs," they listened to her more. I would make posts so ignorant I started a fight, and after that was reluctant to say much beyond a silly quote or joke. That was over a decade ago...I remember I left when I left for Livejournal.
Anyway, then the fall would come, and drama/music was a lifeline for me as a teenager. When I went up to the high school, it was like real life suddenly came crashing back onto me in full force. My overprotective parents didn't really appreciate it, but they had to let me stay out and go out with people who got their driving licenses, because I had joined the drama club and two choirs, and a rather strange little clique of people I would go on trips with and see almost every weekend. I even had a love life, but if anything, it was full of drama and heartache. As if an absent birth mother, who then passed away, hadn't screwed me up enough: 16-year-old Yamara34? You do not date people from your own clique. That's how you lose the entire clique when it doesn't work out.
It was probably a mistake to apply to and attend a HUGE undergraduate university. The biggest in the state. That's what I did, though, and while I drifted through cliques of people, and many lovers, I never taught myself or bothered to try and figure out how to make female friends - I mean, I would love male friends too; a few old lovers became my friends, but that's so rare for that to happen - infatuation is passionate and fleeting, with me - but other women, it's always been hard for me to figure out how, after high school, to meet other women. I'm like Paul Rudd in that movie "I Love You Man," except I'm the opposite gender. I'm even more awkward around other women than I am around men, as I've stated.
I suppose maybe I'm in the wrong place, because I'm not shy and I don't have anxiety, at least, not very strongly, but I am, really. Shy. Even online. Even on Livejournal, when the opportunity arose to share my fanfiction (it's a huge element of participatory fandom culture where you, you know, write your own script for an existing TV show, for example, except in regular prose). I would get the physical symptoms of anxiety sitting in my own bedroom, on my own computer, talking to people on the Internet I would never meet! It flabbergasts me to this day how I met the men I did fall in love and into friendships with during college. I suppose it was from classes, from work, from across the hall. Now, with people moved away across the country, some of them across the world, I have the opportunity to meet new people, new women AND men, and even when my friends introduce me to THEIR friends, I sort of sabotage it. Not even in any kind of hostile way, but just by NOT going out, by not calling up people or emailing them, by sort of just staying on my own, just around my own relatives, just sort of...by myself.
I don't know if that's remotely the same as being anxious or shy. Maybe it's being lazy.
Tonight I went out to meet some people from online for the first time, but I hadn't talked to them before, and it was fun, yes, but I wonder if maybe I'm just so rusty there's no point bothering. But there IS, of course. If I had fun, it shows I could go do it again, and it shows there's this whole part of my life I'm missing out on: being with other people, in whatever capacity. With other women. Just chatting.
I've tried to drag myself around the world when I had the opportunity - England, Ireland, Scotland, Europe. Around America. I would love to see more someday. Australia, Asia, South America. But I don't know. I'm not the type. It's like I see the photos and read the stories, but you get me there, and I fall apart wanting to go home. I sort of wish I was that globetrekker type. Outgoing and extroverted. I remember getting REALLY drunk with a Canadian girl and a Texan boy in Seville, Spain, and he started to psychoanalyze me. He gave me a little credit for hopping on a plane to Spain (for living in England for a year), but that I had a lot to work on. A LOT.
Okay, I'm not sure if I completely broke every rule of this Diary thing, but...
I'm tempted to hit Post Message anyway...
Hope you find what you're looking for. 