Outside my head

[Jessica Ballantyne]

This is going to sound annoying. Living in a town for 29 years, all I ever heard by others is that I'm so quiet. They literally couldn't get a word out of me. I was too busy daydreaming in my head to realize how I looked on the outside. I actually never knew it made me look stupid. Non-family can be vigorous that way. I always used MD as a way to escape my frustrations, but it did me more harm that good, so I had to quit. It was the best decision I made. 

What reasons did you start doing MD? We're their any social issues involved that triggered this? 

[Kiruba Victor]

Yeah, for me it's the gaming and tech community mostly but I can pick up conversations with people of other interests if we can talk well. I've recently started watching Formula 1 despite not being previously acquainted or interested in it just because two of my closest friends watch it. As for remarks, I've gotten a fair bit of those, people saying I don't look them entirely in the eye and that I zone out every now and then. I'm actively attempting to change it but it does slip at times.

[Jessica Ballantyne]

I find the best crowd to get along with is in the art community. I'm friends with an old art teacher and she runs a heritage studio up north, and she runs a large community of art enthusiasts. I always get along with people over there and I'm rarely judged for how I look and sound. Except this one time, I was talking to an Italian woman at an outdoor fresco on my teacher's property, and she remarked how my eyes squint shut when we spoke, and that I could be more interactive. Well on a positive and light note. She was a genuine person. But yeah, people are going to pick up on these things. 

[Kiruba Victor]

Yeah, but what happens after they see something odd can be changed, like their reaction after seeing an oddity, whether they choose to jeer, help or look the other way. For me, if someone initiates a conversation, I find it easy to carry it on. I'm just not too good at initiating them myself, which I'm aiming to improve.

[Jessica Ballantyne]

Yes, you can see why that incident still effects me today. Thing is, humans naturally tend to be overly curious when something doesn't look OK to them, especially when its weird or offbeat. They will start to talk. Kind of like when someone gets in a car accident, and soon everybody slows their cars to get a good look. You have to take care of yourself, so that doesn't happen. 

It's hard to say how well I'd do in social situations, because I've been staying safe at home in a pandemic for over a year now, and wearing masks in public. I'm sure that if I finally got to attend a social gathering, I probably wouldn't know where to start. And heck knows how the other social and talkative people will be viewing me. Probably very similar, since I struggled with social complications all my life. Maybe next time if I did get to socialize, I won't be the same person just sitting there being quiet. I will try to strike up a conversation with a friendly person or more. It does take practice. I just don't want to fall into the same scenario, where I show up, and everybody is like "Your quiet." It seems to define my past, and I do what to turn this around. 

[Kiruba Victor]

Now that's messed up a lot. People with mental health issues shouldn't be singled out or pointed at more because it will only aggravate it. And dragging you to sit with another person when you don't want to, now that's something else even worse entirely. It'll impact your equation with that person. I can see how embarrassing that is, being dragged like that with other kids watching. It's hard enough to have your own parents shout at you in front of others, let alone something like this. I'm actually curious to visualize what a conversation between your mum and that principal would look like after you've informed her of your incident. That will be a day to remember for that school XD

And yeah, I should've started going out more often, but back then it seemed like such a herculean task, that it drained energy (it still does. talking for extended hours to people makes the back of my head and neck hurt actually). Is it weird that now that I have a small but amazing set of friends, the only reason I see going out to socialize would be to find romantic prospects?

[Jessica Ballantyne]

Only if you meet more people, you'll get new opportunities to know and find your partner. But I just can't seem to "be interesting" to them.

When I was 13 (circa 1999) My dad strongly advised that I do just this and get out of my room. I wish that I knew this as a teenager, but I wasn't smart or experienced enough to realize he was giving me good advice that I will not regret.  In my mind, I thought "Why the haste and urgency? I will get loads of chances in my teens and adulthood stages to experience relationships and friends." But then years passed, and I stayed being introvert and unsocial, tending to my own work, but hardly paying more attention to others. I now realize it's sad that I didn't follow his great advice. 

[Jessica Ballantyne]

I did want people to notice me and I sometimes did get attention. But it wasn't the attention that I had in mind. Either people just ignored that I was there, or they were mean and critical on me. They always brought up the same stupid, boring remark. "Are you stupid?" or "Your quiet!" Others expressed it with sarcastic humour, "Calm down. Quiet down. Easy does it." And I would just be sitting there all quietly and emotionless like stone. In my mind nothing was wrong with me, and I was normal. But to everybody else, I was very weird, they couldn't help but stare, laugh and point at me. I guess, it's because I wasn't normal, chatty and outgoing for them. Most of my teachers kept their business on teaching their class, though some of them did make comments. 

It never escapes my head, I had this one weird teacher in middle school who treated me like a mentally challenged kid. He was a jokester and got students to do some stupid and hilarious things for class entertainment. However, he kept on looking directly at me and insinuated remarks about my strong silence. At one moment, I sat by myself at the front of class, when everybody else had seating buddies. A student named Andrea pointed at me, saying "she's just sitting there alone, like an island." My teacher erupted in a loud holler, literally took me by the arm and dragged me to sit with Andrea. Can you imagine how embarrassed I was? Other times, Mr. Allen would crank more jokes to me and even pull me aside in class to explain that he meant no hard, and he once took me out of another class, standing there, looking at me intently, wondering if everything is all square, because he's just wasn't sure how I felt. I was so quiet and stoic. Even if I did freak him out with my mysterious behaviour, it was really none of his business. I should've told my parents, but I never brought up this teacher, funny enough. If I had, my mom would've went to the school to have a nice, sweet chat with the principal. 

[Kiruba Victor]

Yeah, while eating, I focus on the food definitely. Ain't nothing getting in the way of that. But yeah, in group settings, people don't usually notice if I'm there unless I talk and often, they respond briefly and go about their normal conversations. I'm quite quiet in general but if I open up, I can't stop XD. 

And yeah, only if you meet more people, you'll get new opportunities to know and find your partner. But I just can't seem to "be interesting" to them. I'm putting in effort to change it and one day, the results will be positive for it (It's so funny how the word positive is one of the most feared words in this time XD)

[Jessica Ballantyne]

I think I'm like you. Yes in social situations I try to be friendly and want to express my own opinions in conversations. For some reason, I end up being extremely quiet. I feel that people talk about things that are over my head and perception. There's food and drink, which I find distracting. I feel I talk better when I'm not having a feast. Overtime, I feel very bad and anxious. Eventually, a person turns their head at me and asks me "Are you OK? Your very quiet." It's quite horrible. I've had some people treat me like I have a problem or maybe I'm having a bad day or I should go to bed. Then something comes out of my mouth, and someone is like "Wow she's actually saying something. She can talk." So if I want to attend a party, wedding, grouping or whatever, I would never just stand there and be quiet. They'll just think I have no friends. All social butterflies and extraverts will say that about me. Even my closest girlfriends have all mentioned that I'm just a quiet person. 

Trouble is when I was a kid, I thought it was OK to be quiet, and I can still have relationships, because people have always said how beautiful I looked. I was just complacent that way, and continued to dream of having a relationship with a guy. But over the year, I stumbled onto the same problems, where people avoided me for being quiet and incapable of social interaction. It was a slap in the face, but they were right. I was mad at myself for being so ignorant and not changing my ways. Now I realize why all the students in my high school clacked my full name in the classes and hallways. They found my behaviour abhorred. Important thing is I learned a lot and will try not to let this happen in future. 

[Kiruba Victor]

Well, you definitely know what you want to do. I don't even know what I'd like to do for a job, my interests and all. All I know is that I just want to be peaceful and happy. I took the wrong degree because of that, although it does open 90 percent of doors here in India XD (Engineering degree opens a lot of doors, that 90 percent of the people who are B.E graduates here in India, don't often end up in an engineering job)

As for relationships, I also thought that I'll get dates in my college life. I did find ways to meet some people, like you. But I didn't take a step forward in a romantic direction out of fear that the friendship I have will be lost and things will be awkward afterwards. So I think I might've missed out on some people who maybe did like me that way (And it's a pretty big "might", XD). I suck at group settings where everyone has something to talk about already, I feel like my brain is blank at the moment (how ironic, isn't it, that as someone who has enough creativity to MD, runs blank on social situations). So often times, people don't even notice if I'm still there. It feels like my throat freezes whenever I attempt to "infiltrate" a social circle, so to speak. I'm always looking for ways to get rid of that anxiety. Lot of my friends tell me that I'm quiet sometimes and sometimes I'm extremely boisterous (happens only when I discuss something I'm quite interested in), that it's unpredictable XD.