All-consuming

I’ve grown to like wearing a mask. I get to hide behind a mask when I’m out, and I needn’t put on a full face of makeup either. I head out once or twice a week now, just to the office for work, and I stay home the rest of the time, working from home. I get to be in PJ pants all day long at home, and I get to save a lot of time and money on travelling this way. I’ve been habitually logging all my income and expenses on an app for years now, and although numbers don’t stick with me and are pretty meaningless to me, it’s interesting to see the upward and downward trends on the charts. I don’t know if it’s high or low, but I’m on a medical scheme thing from the government for low-income households, and mine’s for the lowest income bracket.

	Average monthly salary	Average monthly expenditure	Average monthly balance
2014:	$1.3k	$1.7k	-$400
2015:	$1.1k	$1.1k	$0
2016:	$400	$1k	-$600
2017:	$1.6k	$1.7k	-$100
2018:	$2.6k	$1.3k	+$1.3k
2019:	$2.9k	$2.1k	+$800
2020:	$3.2k	$2.3k	+$900
2021 so far:	$4.2k	$1.9k	+$2.3k

I have no one to talk to. Shortly after my previous post, I decided to leave the gaming group. The interaction was pretty superficial anyway. Conversations were mainly about (and during) the party games we were playing, and these were dwindling as well. My darkness was also bringing the mood down, so I left. I’m hypersensitive and get hurt by the littlest of things and the slightest of rejections. My emotions vacillate a lot due to my fearful avoidance, and the fearful avoidance is all-consuming. It’s with me and on my mind every second of the day. I don’t think others are aware of just how much my emotions vacillate. When I leave and drop off the face of the earth, they usually react with shock and confusion.

I really miss the ones I had a connection with. I wish I could talk to them again, but that’s not possible. I don’t think they’d care much about me anymore, and they probably have different lives and different people in their lives now. Plus, I wouldn’t want to go back and bring them down with me. They’re better off without me. If I truly care about them, I’ll let them go and keep the hurt to myself. It just hurts so much. Anything I do hurts. Everything’s a double-edged sword. It hurts when I reach out, it hurts when I keep to myself. I don’t know what to do. The special few whom I got closer to, they told me that they felt like I didn’t want them around. I don’t get that all. I’m the one who felt that way about them, and I was always just waiting and waiting for them in agony. The waiting hurts so much. I tried to reach out to them sometimes, but it never really stuck, and that hurts so much too. Maybe I’m too intense. Maybe I expect too much. Maybe I expect the relationship to be all-consuming, especially since I don’t have anyone else, but they have others, so it hurts a lot when it falls short of my unrealistic expectations. In moments when they made me happy, I got incredibly sad too because I knew it was going to be short-lived and that they were too good for me. I just end up crying. Crying, crying, crying. That’s all I do. Woe is me. They got tired of my sadness too, and that really hurt. Everything hurts me. I have to remind myself that conversation got really sporadic with them after a while, so what I’m searching for wouldn’t be there too no matter how much I’m tempted to reach out to them again. Conversation would be just as sporadic, if not more, since we’d be starting from the awkward stage of being-back-to-strangers-but-not-really kind of thing. And all the hurt would start piling up again. I’ll reread our conversations yet again to trick my mind into thinking that I’m socialising and to make me feel like I still have them with me. It’d make me cry a lot as I go through the same rollercoaster of emotions once more, but I can’t think of a better alternative.

Besides the INFPs, who can read my emotions so well, which is awesome since I don’t have to elucidate my emotions but incredibly exposing and embarrassing when I don’t want them reading my emotions, I’m fond of the INTPs too. I never knew they had a softer side to them and I’d always thought that they were just a debate partner for the INTJs. I thought the INTJ-INTP pairing would be a pretty cold and completely rational relationship, but it really isn’t. Both sides end up feeling special that the other opens up to them, especially for the INTP in my case, since I’m so fiercely private and closed off and hard to get to know. My ears perk up like a pup pup whenever I spot an INTP.

My connections have never lasted. They were always short-lived. If I’m the one who’s never formed a substantial, long-term relationship with anyone and am incapable of doing so, while everyone else has (or has had) friendships and partners, what does that say about me? I’m the issue, isn’t it? I’m the one with the issues. It all comes back to me. I’m the problem. I’m the alien.

~*~

I’m in love with a shell of what once was
Grieving the death of one who still exists 
The person I knew is no longer there
The connection we had has long since gone

I’m in love with a dream of what could’ve been 
Knowing it’d never be reality
I’m in love with an idea, that is all
Searching for something that can never be 

~*~

Why and How

Why can’t I stop crying?

How do I die?

I wish I could talk to them again.

I wish I had someone close to talk to.

Filtering People

The crying spells are back again. Why is it as though I’m mourning the death of loved ones? I miss the people I once had a connection with. I miss how they could read me and understand me so well. I wish I could go back and talk to them again. I just talk to them in my mind and replay old conversations. I really miss them.

Maybe I’m asking for too much. They tried to convince me that quality time was the most important for them too. But doing other things while conversing with me was more damaging and detrimental to the relationship than maintaining it.

Will I always be in this grieving state? It’s been years now, hasn’t it? I still think about them a lot, if not every day. I doubt they think about me much, if at all. I wish the best for them and I’ll always be cheering for them from the sidelines.

What’s wrong with me? Why am I like this? Why does this happen to me? There’s a lot wrong with me. It all leads back to me. My doings, my perceptions, my issues.

I see all these videos of people playing video games together and being so co-operative, patient, encouraging, and supportive of each other. I’ve always wished I had someone like that to play with. It’s such a whiney, only-child thing to say. I feel like such a crybaby.

I don’t know if I’m just hypersensitive or if I somehow just happen to always be around people that treat me badly. I’ve questioned this pretty much my entire life. Filtering people seems to work better for me. On a whim, some time after my resolve to go back to just playing single-player games, I sent out filtering messages looking for such-and-such a partner to play so-and-so co-op game. And indirectly through this, I met other people individually and we’ve since formed a server.

It’s made up mostly of an international group of girls, mainly an INFP, 2 INFJs, an ENFP, and me — an INTJ, with all of us from different parts of the world. It’s the first time I’ve ever had an opportunity to play co-op games with others, and I’ve been downloading co-op games to take advantage of this opportunity. It’s not going to last long, for me at least. It’s funny how I’m so open with them. I’ve not been this open about myself with anyone in years.