Withdrawing

[serene]

Lately, I am withdrawing again from the company of most humans. I have trouble finding words for how it feels, but it's not entirely unpleasant from my point of view. I like being alone. I like being in my home. I like having lots of downtime.

The rough part is always managing the disappointment (at best) and pathologization* (at worst) of people with whom I end up canceling plans. I make very few plans, in general, but in my more gregarious times, my desire to see my friends and do interesting things sometimes writes checks the hermit within can't cash. And then I go back to making no plans at all, until my next burst of feeling like everything sounds like SO MUCH FUN.

I love my friends—the ones I'm close to, who are few, and most of the people I'm just friendly with. I just don't have the [energy | desire | ganas] to do anything about it most of the time. Doesn't lessen my love for them, but it certainly does reduce the amount of shared experience we can use to build and deepen our relationships, and it does, I'm sure, harm people's feelings of closeness to me. So it's something I hope to become better at managing, or finding ways to connect with people in spite of it. Or something.




*That is, people's expressed views about how it's unhealthy for me to draw inward like this, or how I'm probably depressed. If I am, it's either so mild that I don't recognize it as such, or its main "symptom" is a desire to be by myself, which doesn't keep me from going to work or functioning in the world, so I feel frustrated and minimized when people need to tell me that my "wintry" feeling is depression, even as I take care to concede that it may be, even if it doesn't seem that way to me.

Comments

[redbird]

I suspect that you may be running into people who know that when they draw inward in what looks like the same way, it's a sign of depression. But if you're still functioning in the world, and enjoying things that you do, I wouldn't worry about it.

Disappointment I understand; I do my best to distinguish between "yes, I will be there/do this unless something major goes wrong unexpectedly" [which covers acute illness, weather shutting down the transit system, and the like, and doesn't need stating) and "I'll try for this, but my energy is limited" and warn anyone else involved about the latter.

[onyxlynx]

Yup. That. Sometimes.

[flarenut]

This reminds me a little of the comment a friend recently made about the stereotypical introvert/extrovert scale: "I don't need time to recharge after being around people I like, I just don't like very many people." As long as you're comfortable with it, the only problem is being comfortable with whether other people are comfortable. (And just below this in my feed is a post about "emotional policing".)

[firecat]

Hello! I'm writing this from my computer room, where I have spent the vast majority of the last five days quite happy that I have no one for company except my cat.

People don't pathologize me, but I pathologize myself; that is to say, I worry that if I let myself be alone as much as I want, I'll stop being able to deal with physical human beings at all.

As for whether it's depression -- I expect you're clued in to yourself enough to know whether it is. Sometimes for me wanting to be alone is depression[1] and sometimes it's the opposite of depression[2]. I can definitely tell the difference.

[1]I don't want to inflict myself on people; I don't want to be around anybody caring about anything, because I can't care about anything.

[2]Sometimes being alone and/or in a very simple, quiet environment feels GLORIOUS.

[firecat]

Also my impression is that you aren't really alone most of the time -- you are working in an office and living with a partner in a smallish space. Anyone who pathologizes that doesn't have a very good grip on the range of possible normals.

Wow, what a mixed metaphor.

[metaphortunate]

I FEEL YA.

Let me take a moment to say that I continue to like you a lot even if rarely face to face. :)

[mig]

It's like you're inside my head. Spooky.