dis/connections

Before I started this blog, I had a Livejournal. I stopped using it shortly after moving to Chicago with Jenny. Finally I had a relationship, screw everyone else. When I started blogging again, I wasn't interested in the social media side. I wanted it to be public, but I wasn't looking for conversation or likes. I didn't tell anyone about the switch because I didn't want to be social.

One of my old friends did find it, made a few comments, and disappeared. I regret not even noticing the new comments until he'd gone away. That was typical of the relationships I'd had most of my life. Noticing too late, not sure what to do, not really caring. Handfuls of random people I didn't pay much attention to, and then I'd disappear and forget about them.

Sometimes they'd get mad at me over some misunderstanding and I'd never hear from them again. I never even tried to explain it was a misunderstanding. Not that I didn't care, but I didn't care enough. It felt exhausting and futile. It felt safer to just drop it, to focus on my daily routines of escaping everything. Sorry, Mike.

I'm disgusted with myself and how I engaged with people, but at the same time, I know that I was a mess. I'm pretty confident that ADHD is my core mental health issue, causing a lot of my anxiety and depression, but for most of my life, it was masked by my growth hormone deficiency. I was so tired, so fragile and weak, it changed the way the ADHD presented. It also made it worse. I couldn't handle trying to be social when I was so tired, just wanting to be alone with my coping strategies.

I haven't looked back at my old Livejournal in many years, but they emailed me some promotional thing, and there I was. Reading my old entries, then reading the comments. All these people I haven't thought about, some I knew better than others. Some tried to be friends with me, but I'd always just drift away. That was my nature, always adrift. Disconnected.

I've felt like writing more lately, so I posted something there too. A brief entry at first, why not. A week later, after failing to make it to the gym on account of feeling lousy for no good reason again today, I found myself writing a new entry there. A summer of these last few years in Vermont. As if anyone from my past might read it. Never know. Maybe they get the same promotional spam.