peer review

When I blog, I imagine lots of other people reading it. Not an audience, but specific people I know, of all kinds. I tap into the anxiety that occurs when I wonder if they might read it. I imagine what they'd think of it, based on my experiences with how they tend to think. Blogging helps me look at myself from many angles.

Often my feelings shift almost immediately, as I take into consideration all these different imaginary viewpoints. I question how well I really know how other people think, or if I'm getting it all wrong. Take the basic premise: I'm upset because a woman that I'm infatuated with just got engaged. This should not be an earth-shattering experience. It's inappropriate for me to have these feelings for someone half my age, and to hide them for so many years just makes it creepier. The whole scenario is me being a weirdo and then crying about it.

My primary defense is that yeah, that's what neurodivergent means. I'm a weirdo in many ways. I know my mind is all kinds of problematic and it's not a good idea for me to be this way. This is another reason I don't often post about this side of myself. My understanding of how it appears to others is pretty awful. A couple different variants of awful, and not a lot of imaginary support. 

Or put another why, my dysfunctional hyperromantic nature is something I'm typically ashamed of and keep to myself, but the state I'm in is making me more indifferent and screwing with my judgment. Let everyone see how pathetic I am. What difference does it make.

Emotional dysregulation is the flipside of emotional sensitivity. I know that there is not a lot of sympathy for people being hypersensitive, and this is similar. It's all in my head. 

Fuck you, imaginary people.

Suddenly my entire world has changed. It's shocking to me, this little piece of news, and bang, everything is different. Or rather, I'm different, so I see everything else as different. Why? I don't even know. It doesn't entirely make sense. I'm a ridiculous person. I struggled for so long to train as hard as she does did. Now what am I doing. I'm still training. I still have momentum, if not escape velocity.

I didn't know I could even feel this way about a real person.