Me and communication

[galadriel1010]

I've always been a bit of a loner; I had very few friends at primary school, and this came to suit me after a while. Despite having a great number of characters by that stage, usually made up of my hands and stationery, I went through an artificial process of creating an imaginary friend for myself, because I thought that children needed imaginary friends. Today I have characters I vent to, and a whole raft of imaginary friends - I even have an imaginary girlfriend. Some of you are my imaginary friends.

So one of the reasons I'm so bad at communicating is because I just spoke to you yesterday. I composed this long message to you in my head, and I just don't remember that I didn't actually send it. It might even be that I made up an entire conversation with you because I needed someone to talk to, and although I'm aware that you weren't actually there... it never really occurs to me to question the conversation.

Yes, I'm aware that this is probably a neurosis of some sort but, quite honestly, I don't give a monkey's except when I realise that it means that I've not actually spoken to people in a long time.

Another problem I have with communication is that I'm fairly shy, really. I'm not beyond making the first move, or even the second. But eventually I'll stop. Periodically, I'll make a concerted effort to get out and comment on people's journals and say hello, get to meet people, and then that will fizzle out and the people I keep in contact with will be the ones who said hi back. This seems logical and sensible to me, and it probably is logical and sensible. The bit where I'm dubious about the sense is the bit where I assume that if you don't respond, it's because you don't like me. It's a bit of a one chance thing, because I am frighteningly quick to assume that you don't want me around.

There's some people who I'm trying really, really hard not to feel like that with, when all my instincts are screaming at me to retreat, lick my wounds and then cauterise them. I'm not willing to give up yet, though.

My other issue is relatively minor, but I hate phones with a passion. I disliked them before I worked in telesales and then data cleansing in a very short period of time, but now I can actually feel ill about the thought of having to make a phone call. That's mostly for official phonecalls, like the "I gave you the money, why have you done this?", but if I'm at all nervous of my reception... yeah, there we go.

And then there's the fact that, as you'll know if you've spoken to me on MSN or in real life, I can do long pauses and companionable silence. I like companionable silence, but I feel like I owe it to you to fill it, especially on the phone. I suck at filling silences - I always end up channelling Jack and leering at you. It's getting me a reputation, or a complex.

So the tl;dr is... I'm not anti-social. I'm just enjoying the companionable silence, talking to you in my head, or waiting for you to make a move.