because I am broken....

[quietann]

I arrived at the clothing swap today and didn't even get inside before there was a bit of "Cambervillian" psychodrama. Before I say anything more, I should say that no one involved, to the best of my knowledge, tried to upset me.

A synopsis of the details: confusion over a dinner run about to be made, and each person involved had a different opinion about whether Ben and I would be welcome or not. The biggest concern was the size of the restaurant (it's small) and one person not wanting a huge group according to someone else... A suggestion -- I think made in good faith -- that Ben and I join the later run, even though it would have people we barely know, as opposed to the "friends since forever" on the early run. Ben and I ended up not going, because ceo and gosling, who were the most positive about our coming along, decided to go home instead of going on the dinner run. We went to another friend's party instead, and were well-fed and had a good time.

I'm just broken in a way that pushes me towards certain thought patterns. Back before I was on medication, if it seemed like someone was rejecting me in the slightest, I just assumed they were -- and detaching me from that belief was extremely difficult. Anyone who thinks that I am cautious socially now has no idea about how things used to be. What medication does is allow me to see that there are other possible explanations having nothing to do with me specifically. What it does not do is allow me to trust that those other explanations are *better* and *more likely.* I don't have a clear sense of who *really* likes me, and who just puts up with me, and who likes me but for one or two annoying traits.

The usual suggestions to try to organize my own dinner runs, parties, etc. don't come easy. The times I try, I don't get much response if any (deguspice making the organizational effort usually helps). It's very easy for me to fall into thinking that it's not worth it -- not worth the potential "truth" to be revealed about where I stand socially.

Comments

[ceo]

oh dear... in the end, I persuaded gosling to go. I wish I'd known that our apparently not going was what caused you to decide not to go; I would have gone back and gotten you. :-(

[sweetmmeblue.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you and Ben were at the other party. I knew very few people and it was nice to see friendly faces. I'm also glad you guys made it out for PPPP.

[quietann.livejournal.com]

yeah, sorry I wasn't more chatty with you. By the time you showed up I was full of food, and very tired... but good to see you anyway!

[bethr.livejournal.com]

Thanks, Ann, for your continued brutal honesty. You always, always made me think.

I didn't even go to the clothing swap this time because I felt so completely unwelcome last time. No one would have invited me to dinner, period, especially if I had ankle biters with me...

[quietann.livejournal.com]

I think that at the last one, if I remember right, the main problem was with your kids, who were... not at their best, shall we say! One of the younger ones seems very easily overstimulated and gets cranky when he is overwhelmed. This isn't much different from a lot of your *adult* friends -- myself included -- but adults usually have more insight, better language skills, and the ability to walk away from troublesome situations -- all of which make us much easier to deal with than small children in similar situations. Of course, in the meantime it makes having a social life much more difficult for you, for which I have more than a little sympathy.

but thanks for responding... In a way, my social life or lack thereof was much easier to deal with when I thought I was being rejected personally all the time; things seemed very clear-cut, if much more sad for me. Not knowing what is *really* going on makes this all much harder to deal with... it's forward progress, but that's hard to remember sometimes.

[klingonlandlady.livejournal.com]

Sorry about the whole thing- I really would have liked to see you more last night, and I do always enjoy your company.
It was the combination of several things tho:
1)lyonesse had said at about 3:30: "hey, let's plan to go out and get dinner." Other people generally chimed in over the course of the afternoon that they would come too.
2)By the time you arrived, half the people planning to go seemed already out the door, and I was holding them up. Some of them had a time limit.
3)P and I didn't care who/how many people came, but assumed we'd divide into more tables if it was called for- making it more of a general migration than a party dining together. This was ok.
4)Their service is slow on a normal day, and starts to Really Suck if you have too big a party or complicated an order. As it was, it was slow, they dropped orders, and some people were done eating by the time others got their food.

I probably should have just said "yes, come along but we will probably not get to sit together because i have no idea how many tables we will take up", but you were already telling me that others had told you not to come... which I'm not sure is true. So I felt really confused and put in the middle. Ugh.

Anyhow, I do like you and it would be nice to see more of you. Hopefully we will do a craftnite tonight, but i have to check with P when he wakes up before we send the announcement.

I do wish you wouldn't default to assuming "I am being personally slighted" when there is some mix-up or confusion like that...
My way of getting through such times had been to remind myself that: "Most often apparent slights are attributable to lameness, internal/personal problems and confusion on the part of others. Everybody has their own issues going on, they don't spend their time sitting around disapproving of you."

[scliff.livejournal.com]

T.B. claimed tonight back on tax day.

[dancingdeer.livejournal.com]

Well, I'm glad that you and ben were still there at the clothing swap when I showed up; it was nice to see friendly faces when I'd been uncertain about going in the first place, and then was showing up so late.
I hadn't realized everyone else had headed out together, either.
I wish I'd known of parties going on later; I was at something of a loss last night. Oh, well.

[quietann.livejournal.com]

Yes, it was a weird dynamic, eh?

I *think* the party we went to was public invite to suspects, but I'm not sure. It was in Woburn and most of the folks there were MIT oldtimers, gay guys mostly, and peripherally connected to suspects. We did have a good time, and there was *way* too much food :)

[deguspice.livejournal.com]

The party was a birthday party for a friend and his mother (their combined ages were 100). I received his invite via personal email and a Orkut friends post. I don't think it was sent to Suspects.

[lyonesse.livejournal.com]

0. i just got the raspberries in the ground! thank you very much, & i hope they prosper better than last year's try....

1. what's so "cambervillian" about yr psychodrama? i mean, i personally sat with my housemates and the lovely couple from westford...

2. there was zero formality to the dinner run, and it bore only a coincident relationship to the clothing swap. i wasn't attending the clothing swap really (i had other responsibilities preoccupying me in the house at the time). but i wanted dinner with the folks from westford, and coraline wanted to come with but had to be done in time for her performance that night. several other people had expressed interest in going later, and indeed quite a number drifted in while we were eating (incl. ceo and gosling. i was already mostly out the door when you arrived at the swap, and couldn't wait longer b/c of coraline's time constraint.

3. i would have enjoyed your company over dinner. but really, this tendency of yours to (a) take take this kind of thing as a personal insult and (b) to interpret such in cartographical terms are probably the very things about you that i find the least endearing.

4. and *i* wasn't invited to yr other friends' party. stick that in your psychodrama and smoke it....

[quietann.livejournal.com]

I think if you read what I said carefully, you will see that I specifically said that I didn't think anyone was trying to make me miserable over the dinner run. It was more a post about how my brain works, and how drugs have changed that (see my reply to bethr above for more info)... though most people have not picked up on that. You of all people should understand this.

Per your next to last comment, I *thought* said party was suspects-invite, but in fact it was not. I'm not generally opposed to private-invite events; my buttons tend to get pushed when it seems like "everyone but me" ** was invited.

(** this is not exactly rational thinking... But, if say your 10 closest friends, all of whom get along, were invited to something hosted by someone else you know and get along with -- and you were not -- would you have *no* doubts, no fears, no reaction?)

I ought not to have used the word "Cambervillian" to describe my particular piece of psychodrama, at least not without clarifying what I meant. It has to do with community boundaries and how people on the edge of some community -- Camberville or not -- are treated.

but anyway.... best of luck to your little raspberry plants. Mine go in later in the week... hopefully Tuesday, which is my mom's yahrzeit....

[lyonesse.livejournal.com]

0. i do understand that it's "how your brain works", & i commend you for your insight into that process. it's still a bit of a travail to your friends, i confess.

1. wrt the "say your 10 closest friends" thing....umm, i don't know if you remember or realize this, but that has happened to me. actually happened, not paranoia, and a whole hell of a lot. i wrote an essay called "a nice warm cup of shut the fuck up", which i posted rather broadly, about what that was like, which i guess summed up my reaction.

2. i'm not sure there *is* a "camberville" community in the way you seem to envision it. which makes your self-identifying as an edge member seem kinda mystifying, and is one of the reasons i tend to poke at it when it gets brought up.

3. thanks for the kind thoughts towards my plants, & blessings to you at your mother's jahrzeit. i think planting is an excellent memorial ...

[quietann.livejournal.com]

I'll just take the pleasant part of this :)

I have made a tradition of taking the day off from whatever else I "should" be doing and gardening on mom's yahrzeit. She was a lifelong gardener and it is something I do "in her honor." The fact that the date will always be in the spring helps. I think she'd approve, somehow...

[achinhibitor.livejournal.com]

Back before I was on medication, if it seemed like someone was rejecting me in the slightest, I just assumed they were -- and detaching me from that belief was extremely difficult.

This would be more disturbing if it wasn't the third blog I read such a sentiment in tonight.

I don't have a clear sense of who *really* likes me, and who just puts up with me, and who likes me but for one or two annoying traits.

I used to say to myself, "That can't be true! People don't put up with people they just don't like!" And then the Amazing Dweeb Graduate Student came into our office, and I found myself making nice to him purely for politeness' sake...

Dunno what the solution is, but I think that if one wants unconditional love, one must ask one's mother...