Being around people who I have to suppress myself and my opinions around is so alienating that I'd rather stay alone. My solitude is less lonely than the constant self-monitoring and fear of being judged and scrutinized for doing what is natural to me. I have felt many people quick to judge me the moment I am authentic, honest, vulnerable, and showcase my curiosities. I like people who understand me intuitively, without me having to explain myself constantly. There have been instances where people made me feel understood and cared about, where what I have to say actually matters. But those moments are rare. I have to join an esoteric book club or meet dropouts and outcasts with interesting lives in order to feel any semblance of belonging. Only people willing to live outside scripts feel safe to me.
Faking social niceties. Endless small talk. Pretending I belong to the status quo. It rots my brain and soul. To be who I am is to risk being misunderstood constantly, and I have to be willing to accept that and be okay with it. There's a very specific kind of loneliness that comes from being surrounded by others while having to constantly dilute my thoughts and preemptively manage how I'll be perceived. I'd rather not have to deal with that emotional labor. So I will spend my days going to cafes alone and immersing myself in my various interests. I don't want people to feel sorry for me or pity me. I just don't want to feel excluded or outcasted for simply being who I am. I only want to follow what my heart yearns for without anyone making me feel silenced.
What sucks is that, now that I am a grown adult and have actualized many aspects of myself, I notice there are people who want to be my friend or want to know about my personal life, despite me not reciprocating, never having spent much time with that person, or despite me feeling like I cannot be authentic around that person. All my life I have been taught to "mask," to play the game of social niceties, to cultivate social harmony in order to prevent myself from ever being ostracized.
As a result, I unintentionally give off the impression that I am more open and socially available than I truly am. In fact, I am secretly so deliberate and careful that it is notoriously difficult to become my close friend unless I admire you. I first and foremost love people who are okay with being strange and breaking social norms and discussing taboo topics. I don't shy away from these things unless I am around people I can't be myself around. The type of people who would laugh at me or give me a weird look, make me feel like I'm too much, tell me "it's not that deep", etc. I despise being around people who make me feel self-conscious and force me to suppress who I am. Everything is deep if you hone in on your critical thinking and discernment. I don't think people are prepared for that intensity, understandably.
It requires a very high cognitive and emotional tax for me to exist in spaces that require self-betrayal. That is most social spaces. I've already made immense effort to belong, and I can—and often do—partake in social harmony, but I find it erodes my soul over time. It is a strange thing to me that many people think that belonging is worth the cost of betraying themselves. My choice to remain alone is an ethical choice not to lie to myself. It is difficult for me to make friends because I feel I do not meet many people who operate in a similar manner to me, and that is okay. The moments of being understood matter to me deeply because they prove connection is possible, not because I needed intensity.
For the past five years, I made many friendships because I wanted to break free from the confines of my social anxiety disorder that plagued my entire being. I wanted to go out and do things, to feel like I finally belonged with people, to not constantly feel like an alien or an outsider, and to feel that people actually… liked me. I also wanted to understand others and be there for them. Ultimately, it did not fulfill me at all; in fact, it exhausted me and left me confused about my own identity and morals. By age 25, I have voluntarily cut off all of my friendships, and if I said that I can finally live my truth instead of pretending—that would also be a lie. Right now, I'm still negotiating with the world, as can be observed by my paradoxical need to justify my own solitude instead of simply stating: "This is how I live. Take it or leave it."
pic related: 
Today after dropping off my leather Frye boots at the shoe cobbler, I went to Best Buy to purchase a MacBook. It’s funny, I felt oddly intimidated being there. I lacked the cultural capital I usually carry so effortlessly at thrift shops. All I really wanted was something with ample storage, something I could use to design my site on. I felt shy and even a little scared to ask for help. Normally when I shop, I overflow with temporary confidence, enough to break minor social norms.
A peculiar employee approached me and asked if I needed help. I sensed he had an intuitive knack for identifying normies with zero computer hardware knowledge seeking something decent enough to browse the internet and download things. I began with, “I want to buy a laptop..." "specifically the starlight-colored 15-inch Macbook Air, 16 gigabytes, 256 gigabytes.” I had no idea what 16GB or 256GB even meant, but whatever. I worried my request sounded overly specific or cumbersome, but he immediately understood. I ultimately went with a 16gb/512GB, sky blue MacBook Air.
I felt an immediate sense of comfort and familiarity with him, as though we somehow knew each other already despite being strangers. He had an unusual and striking appearance. He had a pronounced lazy eye, with each eye drifting severely in a different direction. He was ethnically ambiguous, perhaps Persian or Iranian, and his age was equally indeterminate: he somehow looked both 25 and 45 at once, balding included. He had a jagged limp that suggested an uneven hip or torso, possibly scoliosis. I accidentally let slip that I’d be using the laptop to “pirate books and films,” quickly following it with, “um, actually please don’t tell anyone I said that, I have a career at stake,” delivered deadpan. It landed perfectly. We both laughed.
The interaction itself was chaotic. I was rushing since I knew what I wanted. My card was declined twice because my phone had died and I couldn’t confirm the purchase with my bank. He insisted on finding a charger for me, which felt ironic given that we were in a Best Buy, and he was unable to find one. He even offered to go to his car to grab one. Luckily, I managed to force my phone on at 2% and frantically approved the transaction. As part of his job, he asked the usual questions. Did I want to join the best buy membership? Sign up for Microsoft or Adobe subscriptions? Purchase external hard drives? “No.” “No.” “No.” and so on. What stuck with me though, was his articulate, deeply knowledgeable way and particular way of speaking when he were discussing the laptop. There was an autistic cadence to it, something I immediately recognized. The kind you hear in people who have spent thousands of hours online, reading obscure articles, studying niche topics with quiet devotion. I think that’s why I felt so unguarded around him.
Anyways, it’s strange. I’m not someone who generally wants straight male friends given my political stances. We looked like polar opposites. I walked in wearing a full face of makeup and red lipstick, a pleated mini skirt, tights, black leather boots, and a black velvet jacket, topped with a silver chain necklace depicting a girl shooting a man with a handgun that I bought at a warehouse rave in Oakland. My coach sunglasses rested on my head. I looked like I belonged at some trendy curated thrift shop. He looked like a nerd you’d find writing wikipedia articles about spatial complexity at a library basement or attending a game developer conference. Yet, there we were, in a Best Buy in milpitas, and I had this intuitive sense that I had just encountered a rare person who was operating on the same strange frequency as me. I wonder if he felt it too? This was the first time in my life I truly wanted to befriend a man, to crave an equal companionship rooted in shared strangeness or uncanniness. Maybe I’m projecting, but I found it compelling based on subtle congruities in his presence, even within the constraints of his job. I never got his name. I was simply excited and giddy to finally buy a Macbook.
Looking back, I realize we were unconsciously playing our roles: me the customer, him the Geek Squad member. The moment you step into any American retail chain shop, especially a corporate giant like Best Buy, your behavior is softly being modulated without you realizing it. It was almost as if we were acutely aware of this, desperately trying hard to fit our roles under the unspoken expectations of retail and the looming panopticon. Yet still we were failing here and there. My quick curses and exasperations when my card kept declining, our shared giggles when I kept saying "no" with a finalized tone to every single add-on question he was required to ask me. The peculiar looks he was giving me at my odd questions, specific comments, me referring to how I went to reddit dot com for research before coming in. I feel we both picked up on each other's neurodivergencies, which is why I felt so in tune with the wavelength we were on.
I could just be looking way too into it. This could all just be in my head and in fact it was a perfectly normal interaction of small talk between customer and salesperson. But I like to think of life as more interesting than that. The most fun I have is finding a rich inner world inside the most daily interactions. There's a lot you can delve into if you hone in enough on moments in your interactions.
His unfamiliar and unique appearance made me reflect on how quickly we assign stories to people based on what we see. I found myself wondering whether being visibly different might have shaped the way he moved through the world or was treated by others. Was he ever avoided? Mocked? Or was he treated no differently than anyone else? That thought resonated with me and made me feel a quiet sense of kinship rather than judgment. I assume that someone with such a look had more depth to them, namely from how they have been treated by others. Something I can relate to as someone who was bullied for most of her childhood.
I think it’s neat that I can take something so short-lived and fleeting and turn it into something that lasts forever.
Dr. H and the residents tell you, carefully, that you have a month before your intestines rupture. You just made the difficult decision to proceed with an abscess drain that would only prolong the inevitable.
I hesitate and sigh, feigning sadness in front of Dr. H, performing something like humanity while my mind inventories tasks: medications, sepsis screens, endless charting, and a time-sensitive discharge. I've just gotten my SBAR report. There’s no room for mourning. I knock on the door, mentally preparing for an explanation as to my rancid perfume stench after reading the printed sign on your door: “THIS PATIENT IS HIGHLY SENSITIVE TO SMELLS. PLEASE PROCEED WITH CAUTION AND REFRAIN FROM WEARING FRAGRANCES OR SCENTED PRODUCTS.”
It’s 3:30 p.m. already. My stomach twists. Grief doesn’t live in me today, and being here feels like trespassing. I have no idea how to proceed. I feel horrified for existing in your vicinity at all. This morning's spritz of Elizabeth Arden’s White Tea Eau de Toilette, advertised as “clean and inoffensive”, suddenly feels like a chemical intrusion. Even my hair reeks of a sample of Lush Supermilk leave-in conditioner that I hastily brushed through my dry hair, betraying me before I even enter.
Awkwardly, I knock on the door and step into your hospital room. Sympathetic to your hyperosmic olfactory bulb, I attempt to contain myself to no avail, staying more than 10 feet away at all times, already apologizing profusely, with my body language guarded and reserved out of shame. Even my tender voice intrudes, as my perfumed stench permeates the room from 15 feet away. The sickening scent of chemical-laced clary sage fern water, ambrette seashores, and candied orange slices in white tea. It clashes loudly with the gourmand of my tousled brown hair bun dampened with supermilk: nauseatingly sweet almond-oat biscuits drenched in vanilla milk. An absolute screech of scent. You turn your face away and start dry-heaving.
In and out in under a minute, I sincerely apologize for my fragrant decadence, quickly kick myself out of the room as if by a mysterious force, ask for another nurse who begrudgingly switches patients with me, and we never meet again. I sigh in relief. Once again I avoid facing mortality even though, ironically, mortality surrounds me. The perfume clings to my scrubs like guilt. I can’t escape it. Walking down the hall, my hands shake, heart racing, my checklists blur, and every breath of nausea I’ve inflicted lingers on my face mask. Every time I smell White Tea, I see her pale face and smell my own failure.
