u/unendingmisery

i'm fucking retarded

TL;DR: My life feels like it was built around a version of me that no longer exists, and now I’m trapped inside its consequences, partly from my own doing, and partly from external blocks. I know the life that I want quite specifically, and people who know me tend to view me through some outdated image, making my social life feel mismatched with myself, my actual life has none of the structures that would make this imagined life naturally happen. The deeper problem is that I want to be seen and accepted in a new world i don't currently inhabit, but I also hate the performativity and exposure required to become visible. So I’m stuck between intense desire for a new life and a personality/state of mind that resists the exact actions needed to enter it.

Purpose and context

I'll try to speak concisely so this isn't boring, although it's hard to contain this properly in a short-format, and I'll try to keep it interesting so I am not just repeating what other people are saying. This isn't meant to be a pity party or self-focused complaining session, I'm looking for hope or real first-steps or advice, not for sympathy. Hopefully what I'm saying is relatable to others so it's not just helpful to me only. I assume most of these are common problems for people.

The main problem/contradiction

My main issue is that over the past 1-2 years, and especially recently, i've realised quite strongly the type of life i truly want/wanted, compared to what my younger self wanted, and it is one that requires a full structural change within my life to actualise, academic/career, friends, romance, social-life more broadly, environment, hobbies, addictions, even mental patterns. All of these require change, and somewhat depend on each other to be changed, in order to create the "new life". This realisation came quite suddenly and a little "too late" in a way, although I'm aware it's never too late truly.

All of these issues I'd say center on a contradiction that make them more trapping. I hate performativity and hate being seen yet want to be seen and accepted for what i output (perform?). It's some push/pull conflict around social, digital or relational things. Basically I feel cringe doing anything that is put-on, but putting on some act of some kind is necessary for social life changes. So I tend as a result to be unwilling to do small-talk or to start conversations, yet once a "real" connection with the person starts I suddenly switch into confidence. I don't think I'm that socially awkward in the conventional sense, I'm more afraid of my own hatred of my fakeness than with their judgement of me, but of course there is some discomfort too around that. I do especially want to be accepted by people.

This contradiction creates a strong wall around first interactions, and with putting myself out there digitally, with strangers, classmates, people in general where i am effectively a mute unless spoken to first, so i never initiate or try to escalate communication. This wall crumbles once someone breaks the ice with me, and i become talkative and confident with them pretty much in an enduring way afterwards.

So there is plenty of desire, quite a lot of it actually, and I know what I want broadly, but making it happen feels like trying to step into a whole other world to my actual one, and requires becoming performative and facing exposure (prerequisite for this kind of change). I just know I could change and would change if only I knew from a source less biased than myself.

Current life problems/desires

The problems are; feeling I am in the wrong uni degree and too deep to quit, stuck on 15g of kratom a day (quite a high dose), stuck in a city with zero IRL friends or even acquaintances (where i am moving out in 4 months, so finding people feels to be pointless), feeling psychically weighed down and incapable of investing serious effort into anything not uni-work related, having no romantic partner (in terms of access to opportunities, i believe i could get a girlfriend if i was in the right places or circles), feeling repelled by social interactions despite desiring them, having a sleep disorder (non24 hour sleep wake disorder, sighted version) that prevents me ever getting a normal job, my only friends not fulfilling some deeper social need within me, being strange and cognitively misaligned with the vast vast majority of people and thus I require an overly deep sense of meaning that perhaps most others don't need and I envy that.

The desires are; to have a new circle of socially oriented friends around music or other similar kind of things, to join a band (have played guitar for 10 years), to have a partner, to have taken a different degree (philosophy rather than CS), to have met people or gone out more in the earlier years of uni before it got too late, to make music and philosophy work of my own and to have creative works to call my own in a structured place, to be able to reliably form a socially acceptable presentation for my socially unacceptable inner self that doesn't compromise on authenticity, to have some kind of public facing self or recognition, to have access to novel or fun experiences and to escape the infinite daily loop of the same thing every day.

University/College

I am in a uni degree I don't want to be in where I am stuck in my final year burdened by a workload that detracts from almost all available mental/emotional energy, leaving me unable to find uninhibited room to find social connections, develop my guitar skills further, make music (joining a band), work on quitting kratom, find a romantic partner, develop programming skills independently (for money, to work towards a sustainable career atop the creative/social stuff). The mere existence of the workload and their implied demands feels soul-crushing despite me having no interest in the work or the degree, as a result I barely study or work, yet am burdened by their symbolic weight. Given I live alone with zero ties to anyone here, and I have to move to another city in 4 months, it creates this uncomfortable limbo where the loneliness feeds the discomfort, which then feeds the desire to change, which is then turned into a stuck-realisation, which then feeds my use of kratom and procrastination/apathy around the work, then then feeds my "inability" to socialise, create music or to learn anything on my own that isn't the work itself. So it's a vicious loop where each part is caused by the last.

So I know if I re-started this post high school part of my life, I'd do so many things differently, I wish I could have had that uni/college experience that a lot of others have whilst doing a subject that naturally fits my natural propensities with a much easier workload with much more creative freedom. I want that very young adult experience unique to university, but I think it's too late now, financially I cannot do another degree or change it, it is impossible.

The easiest opportunities to make all of this happen come from uni/college in the early parts, with the right degree, friends can be made quite easily, CS may be the worst degree for finding friends, especially with my temperament, and it has a rigid and demanding workload to add on to that, all things realised a bit too late. The world just feels a lot harsher and harder to face outside of the uni environment, there's less of a shared environment or purpose, the people are more unpredictable and less likely to be alike me, the groups of people are more established etc.

Social Problems

My current social situation is quite dire, I quite literally have not made even an acquaintance in the entire nearly 4 years I've been here in uni, this is quite the achievement and it's obviously something I have been doing majorly wrong on my part. I guess I've never even tried to meet anybody in any serious way. I think that I exude distance in conversations with strangers or classmates, something about the new people context turns me into a distant, quiet person. I am genuinely somewhat charismatic and talkative once I know someone beyond the earliest stages, but in the earliest stages i'm effectively a mute unless spoken to directly, even if i want them to speak to me directly. This is the main hurdle to overcome I think. That first-stage wall.

It's not easy to classify as "anxiety", there's definitely an anxious component to it, but it feels fundamentally like something different. It feels governed by resistance more than fear. This wall, and overcoming it, would largely solve the social problems I have. Once I know someone even to just an acquaintance level, then the rest becomes relatively simple. Maybe in that stranger-stage the resistance comes from not knowing where I stand with the person, whether they'd dislike or like me, and once they become an acquaintance the standing is revealed. I care about what people think a lot more than I'd like to admit, yet I also avoid people pleasing or changing what I do in relation to what they think.

I'd say my current friendships feel partly unfulfilling in some deeper way to me. They know me for years from school, and thus have an image of me and expectations for me based on that entire history. I like them a lot and appreciate them but I've changed quite dramatically in the past few years and whilst parts of me stayed the same, other parts have changed. Some of those parts that changed are parts I hide from my friends as it's incongruent with my relation to them, thus these hidden parts convert to hidden unmet social needs. I just want to know people who don't know me from the past, and I want novelty and adventure in a way, and my current friends tend to be the opposite of novelty and adventure in a real-life sense.

Lack of meaning

An underlying theme through all of this is a sense of wanting something more meaningful from people, or life, or myself, than they or I am willing to give or can even provide. If it doesn't have some higher meaning to it, some longer-term vision, beauty or upward direction, then I tend to be resistant to that environment or thing. It's not a good thing, it's something I wish I could change. The CS degree is a good example of this, it feels too self-contained and empty, the culture around it is too focused on money, business, products, and other things like that, and it just feels too lifeless to put my entire life in orbit around that subject, not without other things supplying some meaning. CS is probably the most introverted or antisocial degree, so pair that with the previous point and it creates a strong mismatch for me.

When I was 17 I really was the exact type of person for sitting at home all day doing programming and barely going outside, and I enjoyed that, thus my life went in this direction. I envy my past self for being able to live like that. I fucked up by not changing my degree sooner, even whilst I was rotting from isolation, it seems I was doing some kind of sunk-cost fallacy around this degree, but this realisation came far too late.

Personal reflection and interpretation

When I say it's akin to trying to step into a separate world, there's (in my mind) no obvious symbolic bridge to make the transition feel feasible. My inner desires clash with my personality and social ability. Most of the advice people give to me feels reductive or not aligned with my personality or issues, it's easy to say "just go out there and do it", but that begs questions to me "go where? do what exactly? do those things fit my personality? would those things actually solve part of the problem? do they bring actual meaning?". I do appreciate any attempt to help though when I know the person saying it truly listened, in life I notice a lot of people give "advice" to shut the other person up quickly, rather than to help them in any real way.

Because of course much of the things blocking me are external, but just as many are internal too, so to figure this out i've tried to think about which external blocks can be actually solved, and which internal blocks can be solved, and how many are permanent fixtures that must be worked around rather than solved.

So this is why the advice tends to feel hollow, because it assumes i become someone i am not i.e. a socially calibrated ordinary extravert, and for me to mimic their template rather than working around my actual personality to form the workable solution. But also to an extent they are correct that certain inhibitors in me can and should be changed, so i am unsure what is an excuse from what is real. So I guess I'd really like to know where to start to resolve this both in my mind, and in practice, and for people to tell me what are just my excuses from what is real.