I’m just an 18 year old girl, moving away to a new country in a few days for college.
All my life I’ve been battling shame and anxiety about social parts of life, as I’m always messing up. I thought it was just my parents criticizing me for every word, but then I realized, as a lot of people noticed the same mistakes, that even though harsh, my parents were right.
I hate myself with a passion as my standards for myself and friendship with others are high. I have a strict criteria I don’t meet, and I’m not satisfied enough being friends with someone who doesn’t fit it. So I’m stuck in a loop, where people who meet my standards don’t want to deal with me as I don’t fit theirs, and people who don’t meet mine… well, I can’t find myself wanting to spend time with them. It’s a very contradictory hypocrisy of mine, I know.
I’ve never had friends in kindergarten, despite being highly social and eager to have friends. I was annoying. Gosh, how annoying I was, everyone was saying that. And still am, kinda. I care deeply about what others think of me and try to be as nice as possible, but never let others get too close to me because I know they’ll find me even more annoying then they already do.
I can’t even explain other things in details. I hate myself not for any particular reason but because I don’t even feel human. I look at others when they interact with me, and I know they feel the same way—as if they’re talking to something weird, inhumane, something alien, wearing human skin.
I started distancing myself. I don’t have any close friends, only acquaintances. I tried to come back into social life dozens of times, and always ended up disappointed. I only can make friends online without actually messing up a ton, and when I do meet my online friends in person, right after they usually start pulling away themselves, gradually, disappointed.
Everything I do is weird. I don’t have “social anxiety” in a typical way. It’s not like I can’t speak or order a pizza on a phone, it’s just that there’s something unsettling in me that others notice and keep their distance just in case. Shame, shame, shame, shame is burning through me like lava every day of my life, and all I ever wanted is to apologize to others for my existence.
Anyway.
I’m living right now. Alive, breathing, whether it’s a good thing or not. My family cares about me, despite getting annoyed at me often, and I know that if I wasn’t their bloodline I doubt they’d actually like me.
How do I come in terms with that?
How do I accept this, and finally relax? I waited 11 years to finish my school, counting every day until I leave it and won’t see those people who saw me at my worst and hated me, deep down, and I can’t let this happen again in university. I can’t. I just want to calm the heck down and survive this without being annoying and miserable.