I Know What You’re Thinking: How I Became a Loner

Response to Pointless Overthinking’s Question of the Day – No. 508  

“How often do you assume others think bad about you and how do those thoughts look like?”

 When I read this prompt, a torrent of emotions flowed into me.  Do I assume others think bad about me?  YES YES A THOUSAND TIMES YES. That is the whole reason that I have become what some would call “a loner,” or what others (my extended family) would probably call an annoying bad word.  As a matter of fact, I just recently wrote a blog on this subject, saying that this is another type of person for whom Proof of My Existence was created, Who Else is This Blog For?

So it won’t surprise you to know that I am an LSerD and an LSerA (see sidebar).  Oh, I came by it honestly.  These things are often given to you by others as a gift, the gift that keeps on giving throughout your entire life.  The people who matter to you most, the adults in your life who are supposed to nurture you and care for you and encourage you and build you up and help you to become a confident person, instead they hit you with little punches of insults and little blow-by-blow attacks that tear you down, little smacks, backhanded compliments, little things to let you know that you aren’t very much at all.

Invariably, these adults get older and they move on, or you do.  You’re out of their homes or, now that you’re an adult, you don’t have to go and stay at their houses during the summer, or they die.  Now I’m not commenting on how you might feel about them.  You probably love them; I did.  We’re all flawed.  But what these people do is they leave a gift behind for you, the gift of their voices.  They have planted little seeds of all the negative things they’ve said to you.  They’ve planted them; they’re there for good.  They’re the lawn that is you.  They’re the lawn that is your life.

So, back to Pointless Overthinking’s question:  how often do you assume that people are thinking badly about you and what do those thoughts look like?

Well, since my lawn has been seeded with negative thoughts, negative opinions about me, since I was a child, in order for me to leave my house to step out of myself and go anywhere, I have to walk across that lawn.  So when I get to your house, what I see and what I hear, what I’ve dragged in with me – on my feet and in my heart and in my ears and in my brain and in my eyes – are the negative thoughts, the backhanded compliments, the slaps, all the things that tore me down.  And when you open your mouth to speak, regardless of what you say, those are the things that I hear.  If you don’t say anything, I’m assuming you’re not speaking because you don’t want to hurt me with one of those bad things.  I’ve done it for you, I’ve done the work for you.  You don’t have to tell me how bad my hair looks.  I already know; I’ve been told all my life.  You don’t have to tell me that I talk too loud.  I already know this; my mom told me all the time.  So I assume, when you’re quiet, that you’re quiet because you’re judging me.  I came by that honestly.

What do those thoughts look like? They look like the faces of the people who left me the gift of depression.  What do those thoughts sound like?  They sound like everything that was ever said to me that was negative.  I realized and acknowledged this years ago when I had a YouTube channel.  I had a pretty good following that was getting bigger and bigger everyday.  I ended that channel because I had a little problem.  If I posted a vlog and 300 people commented positively and one commented negatively, I was sick for the next week over that negative comment.  It was as if the positive comments didn’t even exist.  I couldn’t get over that negative comment.  It was literally making me sick.

Now I know that the same thing can happen with blogging but the fact that my face isn’t on here, I just don’t feel like it’s the same.  Those comments to my face, that they could see, were no different than all of the things that have seeded the lawn of my life.

So yes, I often assume that people are thinking negatively about me and those thoughts look like every face that has ever said anything negative about me.

This has led me to being the oddity that is an introverted extrovert.  I’m really good with people when I can stand to be with them.  But then, when I leave them, I take all my worries with me.  Social anxiety.

But that’s another post for another day.

(edited) Image by StockSnap from Pixabay.com