My_Social_Problems.txt

My_Social_Problems.txt

I wrote a very long rant that I wanted to send to Social Security explaining what is wrong with me socially (they review my mental disability benefits every 3 years). It's really hard for me to explain it briefly so I wrote this massive essay, lol: 

The fourth reason I can't work is social. I have issues with forming or sustaining human relationships and I have social issues. I have no real two-way friendships (I like the idea of being a normal person, but I am fine living with no real friendships and I don't even experience loneliness except for occasionally missing the company of my mother). Like on 11/14/2022 I was in Washington DC on a trip and my uncle who lives there asked me if I was seeing any old friends in the area because from December 2016 to August 2018 I lived there for work, and the truth was that even though I had Facebook friends from my old work and from the board game club that I used to attend there, there was nobody who I was actually close with, who I actually kept in contact with, or who I was interested in talking to—I don't sustain interpersonal relationships (I don't know if I briefly form a real connection when I first meet someone but don't sustain or strengthen it over time or if there is never any real relationship from me to them in the first place other than the relationship one might have with a temporary acquaintance - I believe it's the latter). This is an aside but in the past I had a situation where I met someone, talked with them, and they liked me, and they were like “you are my friend now”, but in my head I was like “I am totally not your friend—you could die and I won't care”. I can meet people and interact with them, but there is no real relationship there—they are nothing to me even if we have interacted repeatedly in the past. It's sort of like I'm able to interact with people but unable to truly have or sustain a real relationship with them—they're just someone who I happened to interact with in the past, an acquaintance. I cannot date (and I tried my best for over a decade but was never in a boyfriend and girlfriend relationship with anyone ever despite being straight). I tried everything I could to get a real girlfriend—I put myself on between 4 and 6 dating apps for over 10 years, I went to club activities, bars, and nightclubs, I read self-help books, I consulted with multiple dating coaches, I lowered my standards for things like sexual attractiveness to zero, I went to hundreds of events, many of which were singles events, I even posted personal ads online and tried to seek out a long distance relationship, but was still never in a real boyfriend and girlfriend relationship (although I did fall in love with some people and internet stalk them). Like you'd expect real relationship formation to happen naturally but for me it doesn't. My online interaction also has problems. On March 3rd to 5th 2022 I tried messaging a young woman online multiple times but I had to unsend the message each time because it was making me crazy and ultimately I gave up trying to message her and had to block her to preserve my sanity. I previously had to give up contact with a young woman because I had a panic attack every time I replied to her, and yes I've tried meds for that and nothing can prevent it. On 4/26/2023 I liked an Instagram post that said "your job is not to be liked by everyone, your job is to be and love yourself", and I was considering sharing it, but I was afraid to give off what I call "Relationship Forming Vibes" which can trigger my panic response, but I shared it anyway and then I had the panic response, so I had to delete the post. I can be superficially social when I first meet a new person in-person, but I can't keep it up long-term, and I can't be that way on the public internet—I tried multiple times and not only did it not feel genuine but also it gave me panic attacks like I described in the previous sentences. I recall a time when I canceled a date because I had constant and recurring panic attacks that wouldn't stop until I canceled the date and then never talked to her again. I can't control the panic response, it's like an automatic, involuntary, almost allergic type reaction I sometimes have to relationship formation where the only solution is to delete or unsend my communication or end the interpersonal relationship (I call this panic response my "Relationship Destruction Reflex" because it destroys relationships). This is a recurring thing for me. I anticipate never having a girlfriend or wife even though I have always wanted one (or at least thought that I wanted one, or at the very least liked the idea of having one). Like if there were a button I could push to have a girlfriend or wife I would totally push that button—I don't even care much about her race, her weight, if she has mental illness, how poor she is, if she's below average looking, etc.—I have always had a desire for a girlfriend or wife but have never been able to make it happen. Social relationships are important for many jobs and leadership positions but for me that aspect of life is severely hindered. Even getting a job requires going through a job interview, which requires leaving a good impression on a hiring person, which is a social barrier. Many jobs also ask for recommendations from past coworkers and managers, and those people have witnessed my shit work performance and personality (multiple of them have unfriended me on Facebook, and my old manager even blocked messages from me on LinkedIn). Also, one time I tried emailing a human relations person and had panic attacks after every email I sent, which made work related functioning difficult. When I'm not having panic attacks after messaging someone, I tend to lose interest and not reply anymore—I can be sort of "asocial" or "not social" towards other people in that regardless of how I'm doing, I never want to smile at anyone and tell them that I'm doing well, and also I pretty much never ask people who know me well "How are you?" or "How's it going?". I don't care. I mean I have in the past copy-pasted that “Hey, how's it going?” message and send it out to multiple women who I matched with on a dating app in order to get the conversation rolling, but that level of socialness is an initial, superficial thing, so with people who I actually know I don't ask them “How are you?”. I don't care to hear about other people's Christmas or whatever. I'm not interested in whether or not they slept well last night. If they're interested in me I can share things (or sometimes over-share things with no sense of boundaries) about myself with them, at least initially, but I'm not really interested in them (I mean sometimes I am interested in a new person initially when I learn basic things about them like what they do for a living, but that sort of interest runs out of fuel eventually). When me and my mom spent time with my cousin Karina and her husband, I noticed that her husband was asking me a bunch of questions but I wasn't asking him any questions, and that was normal or natural for me. Like I might text someone new or someone who liked me on a dating app the copy-pasted message "Hey, how's it going?" because I'm sexually attracted to them and I want to get the conversation started, and then they might reply "Good, how about you?" but the conversation sometimes just ends there—I just stare at their message and never reply and am not interested in replying. Sometimes instead of not replying I overshare (ex. by writing "I feel depressed and have issues when I try to walk"), causing them to distance themselves from me (I tend to do this with women more whereas with men I'll usually just stop communicating, although sometimes I will overshare and then later stop communicating if they haven't blocked me, like by writing someone a massive letter about myself where I over-share, which is what I'm doing now by writing this essay to Social Security). Like sometimes I will send a woman on a dating app a reply containing a massive essay containing way too much information about myself, causing her to unmatch me or block me, which is basically the same end result as if I never replied to her—no more interpersonal relationship (I think maybe this almost automatic oversharing that I do is part of my “Relationship Destruction Reflex” or is an involuntary, subconscious effort to get them to go away because it results in the destruction of relationships or at least helps avoid their formation, which perhaps is what I subconsciously or involuntarily want). Perhaps one reason I over-share my distress, sadness, or unpleasant experiences or feelings with other people despite the fact that it is unpleasant for them is because I don't care about how they would feel in response to seeing or reading what I'm putting out. With men, I've had people who could have been good friends tell me "text me any time" and I just never text them or communicate with them in any way ever again—I guess I'm not interested. My childhood next door neighbor who I used to play videogames with as a kid gave me his new number at his little brother's wedding that my parents and I attended and said "Don't be a stranger—talk to me some time" and I never talked to him other than texting him my name when we traded numbers—I guess I became a stranger to him despite him telling me not to be a stranger (I am Facebook friends with his little brother but I don't interact with his little brother either). This is an update on April 8, 2023, but yesterday I did text my childhood next door neighbor an article about how the latest version of ChatGPT AI passed the US medical licensing exam because he passed the US medical licensing exam and I thought it would be relevant to him, and he replied "I saw!", but I didn't ask him how he's doing and really I have no interest in that. Oh, and later on I texted him a photo of me at an anime convention because he liked anime too but he was working insane hours as a medical resident at the time and honestly, as someone who is receiving money for not working a real job, I think he's the one who is sometimes jealous of me and all the time I have. Anyway, going back to being asocial, a woman once messaged me "What are you doing today?" and I saw her message but never replied, I guess I didn't want to talk to her (which is pretty typical of me, at least after the initial meeting where I may ask a new person what they do for a living, their hobbies, stuff like that, but I lose that interest after I sort of know who they are). I feel like after a certain point you're supposed to care about them and I don't know if I actually care or can really care (I honestly didn't even care at all when my own grandpa died). Anyway, in early 2023 a guy who knew me before and was listed as a friend on my Facebook and Instagram saw me in real life and tried to interact with me in public and I didn't ask him how he or his mom were (he was with him mom), I just sort of waved and shook hands with them both and was like "I have something that I'm going to do" (even though I had nothing but free time) —I didn't want to talk to them and I wasn't interested in how they were doing or their day or anything. I have a lack of real relationship formation or sustainment (at least beyond the initial introduction where I may use copy-pasted messages or ask them pre-defined questions about themselves). Maybe at some point, especially towards the beginning of our relationship, some of these people who know me thought we were friends but really, at least to me, we were just temporary acquaintances (I am not really anyone else's friend even if someone else believes for some time that they are my friend). I don't hate anybody and I'm not intentionally mean to anyone (except maybe my parents when I want them to go away and stop bugging me), that's just how I am. Sometimes I form one-way parasocial relationships, where I get obsessed with a near stranger or minor celebrity (this has caused me to cyber stalk in the past, Googling their names and combing through all their social media and contacting them repeatedly despite them not being interested. Sometimes I will feel and believe that I am in love with them, and think about them all the time, but after they ignore and block me for long enough it dissipates and I realize that there was never actually anything there relationship wise), but real, lasting, close, two-way relationships with personal emotional caring or emotional response are an issue for me. I once read that love is like a tree where the falling is love with them is the tree with the beautiful leaves, but eventually the leaves fall away leaving a less obsessive kind of love underneath, the bark, but for me after the leaves fall away there is nothing underneath, like they can die and I won't really care. Therapy can't help me because I don't want to tell anyone, including a therapist, how I'm doing and if I forced myself to see a therapist, after spewing my backstory in my typical over-sharing manner, I would be like "I have nothing to say to you anymore—can I please not see you?". I don't really see the point of saying things to a therapist because there is nothing I would say to them that I wouldn't say somewhere on the internet or to some former acquaintance or something. Some people form relationships with their therapist, but I can't even form a relationship with a therapist despite the fact that they are paid to get me to form a relationship with them. One time a therapist refused to see me because he could tell that I didn't want to see him, even though I wasn't aware that I was giving off that impression. I mention this later on in this essay but I've seen maybe five therapists before (who didn't refuse to see me) including one in group sessions and I never felt that I benefited from therapy—in fact in the past I did outpatient behavioral health at Larkin Hospital and the longer I did it the worse my depression got, and then it gradually got better after I didn't do it anymore. In practice I don't think the outpatient behavioral health caused my depression to get worse, I think it naturally just so happens to get worse and better on its own and the timing just so happened to coincide with when I went to outpatient behavioral health, but I also don't think outpatient behavioral health made it any better either (this is the case with a lot of treatments I have tried). I don’t want to talk to a therapist, even if it were free. Socially, even with my current psychiatric doctor Advanced Practice Registered Nurse (APRN) Matamoros, I've gotten to the point where I don't want to have a two-way conversation with him—I would rather give him an update about what is going on with me by leaving him a typed letter, sort of like this essay, or a written message in the MyChart medical records system (which he never responds to and I don't even know if he checks). Real relationships are two-way, where there is closeness between both of you and a real relationship exists, whereas leaving someone a typed letter is one-way, where the person who wrote the letter (me) is oversharing information about myself with you, but there is no information exchange or closeness in the other direction (and there is not necessarily a real relationship in existence between the person leaving the letter and the person reading it), and often after I've left or handed the other person the letter I don't want to see them or communicate with them again, or at the very least I have nothing to say to them anymore. I honestly don't want to see a psychiatrist (or in my case a psychiatric APRN) anymore, but I've heard of people on SSDI for psychiatric reasons who don't see their psychiatrist being asked to see Social Security's doctor during a Continuing Disability Review, and I've heard of Social Security's doctor writing unfavorable, copy-paste reports from templates after a very brief visit that sometimes say things like "can button shirt" even when the patient's shirt didn't have any buttons, so I'm kind of forcing myself to see my psychiatrist to avoid ending up in that situation. If I didn’t worry about a Continuing Disability Review, I wouldn’t see a psychiatrist or APRN anymore - I do not believe they help me. This is an update on 4/16/2023, but I really, really do not want to see APRN Matamoros anymore, but I have to see him, and it is psychological agony for me. I think I might find myself being a dick to him (not on purpose) just to get him to drop me without me dropping him first. This is an update on March 1, 2024, but I am no longer seeing him (his drugs didn't work). I am now trying to see a therapist, at the very least just so she can provide medical records in case Social Security ever reviews me. My therapist’s name is Dr. Maria Karilshtadt-Byk. I verbally dumped a lot of stuff on her initially but in general I can't keep it up long term.

Before I go on to the fifth reason I'm not working, I'm going to go on a little tangent where I clarify a misconception about how I am socially. In the previous paragraph, I wrote "I can be sort of 'asocial' or 'not social'" towards other people. This is not the same thing as being "antisocial". The word "antisocial" is used in the phrase "antisocial personality disorder" (ASPD), which is the phrase that psychologists use instead of "sociopath". I am not a sociopath. I saw a person with ASPD and self-described sociopath talk about how she would do bad things, like in childhood push another kid down the stairs or in adulthood break apart another person's relationship with no regard for other people, just because it excites her, thus bringing her joy. I never do that kind of stuff. I do not enjoy hurting people in real life (although I am a little bit of a sexual dom or sadist rather than a sexual sub or masochist). I am sometimes altruistic, like to homeless people (I once had delusions that homeless people were undercover FBI/CIA who were vetting me and I gave them massive amounts of cash as a bribe so they would refer me for the position of CIA director, which I never got). Anyway, going back to the sociopath with ASPD who I talked about before, this person with ASPD, a YouTuber named Kanika Batra, was female so a lot of the bad stuff she did was more sneaky and less openly violent than the stuff a male person with ASPD would do, but I'm not violent—if anything I do everything I can to avoid a fight. Kanika Batra talked about how ASPD ran in her family and how she had a very charming male family member who brought about the death of another family member to collect an inheritance. I would never do that. That being said, as an asocial person (I don't know if "asocial" is the right word), I'm not really close to my family (except maybe for my mother). Like I remember visiting my grandpa while he was dying and just knowing that this was the last time I would see him and not caring—I didn't feel sad or cry or anything. I didn't have a desire for him to die, but it also doesn't bother me in any way that he died. I mean I guess death is sad, but so is the death of a cute animal. It's just an inevitable part of reality. On Dec 13, 2022 a thought reminded me of my grandpa for the first time in a long time and then I was like "Oh yeah, he's dead", and I didn't feel any emotional response one way or the other—no response at all. Recently my parents went to visit his grave and I didn't care enough to go—he's just not that special to me (also I was getting tired due to going to bed while the sun was out due to my Non-24-Hour Sleep-Wake Disorder). Next I'll talk about my relationship with my dad. I live with my parents now, so I'm forced to interact with him, but when one of us is out or on a trip I don't miss him at all or feel like my life is any worse without him in it. In November 2022 I went on a week-long trip to Washington DC with just my mom and I didn't call my dad—I just wasn't interested. When I didn't live with my parents, like when I was in college or working, I never called my dad. I don't hate him or anything (he regularly gets food specifically for me when he's at the grocery store), I just never experienced a desire to call him and it never crossed my mind when I was living on my own. Third I'll talk about my relationship with my mom, who I also live with. My mom regularly checks up on me by asking me things like "How are you?" or "How's it going?" (when I was at university she called me every day and would freak out if my phone battery were dead when she called), but I don't check up on my mother that way. She's also constantly asking me if I ate and offering me food items like cucumbers even when I'm not hungry, but I never ask her if she ate or randomly offer her food items (I think if she's hungry she can figure something out). Sometimes she tells me about her mysterious arm pain and I might rub it or give her a hug. She's constantly bugging me about my appearance, trying to get me to be better groomed, and honestly if she didn't do that I would look like a caveman with a long beard, long nails, long unwashed hair, and a wrinkly shirt. I am aware that I would look bad, I just don't care. I can sort of fake take care of my appearance in the short term to leave a good impression on a new person but eventually I go back to wrinkly clothes and hair that hasn't been cut in too long. Anyway, I am appreciative of my mother for being there for me after everyone who isn't a blood relative abandoned me, like during times of most severe mental illness. I regularly enjoy my mother's company, like during meals or cuddling on the couch, and I would say I like my mother's company more than the company of any other person I know. My mother appears to be the only person I can actually be with long term (other than myself). When I was a little kid, before I developed my mental illness, I loved my mother so much that I said "I love you" to her every night before bed and made her name my computer game password, but when I first developed (non-ADHD) mental illness (around the age of 13) my personality changed and I don't feel the same love for her that I used to (I guess the love for my mother eventually was replaced by a sort of narcissistic self love), but my mom and I are still close. Like there was a point where I changed from going by "Michael", the name my mom gave me, to going by "John", the name my dad gave me, and sort of went from being mom-focused to self-focused. Anyway, finally I'll talk about someone who used to be a friend to me for years (I say she used to be a friend to me but I don't believe I was an emotionally caring or true friend to her). Her name is "Ally" and she was on the same dating app as me (OkCupid) and was looking for a guy who would be her boyfriend despite her being asexual (a person who experiences no sexual attraction and doesn't care about sex). We matched (I like every female profile because it's faster and gets me more matches). When it came to initiating extended back-and-forth conversions, I never texted her first (except for rare little things like to write her "Happy Hanukkah" if something reminded me to), but she texted me every few days for years, beginning (according to the dates on our texts) in November 2020. I tended to just sort of play along with her texting conversation, just sort of matching her energy. Sometimes I would see her text "Hey" (this was usually her first text) and respond if I was in the mood to chat, and at other times I would ignore her and a few days later she would try again. Eventually because I hurt her self-esteem (I wasn't trying to be mean, I just shared my honest belief about her cognitive abilities) she stopped communicating with me (this happened on 11/8/2022), so at that moment she broke up with me interpersonal relationship wise (I wouldn't say I broke up with her because I never had a relationship with her beyond the relationship one might have with a random acquaintance) and that was the end of us knowing each other or ever communicating again (other than me texting her "Happy Hanukkah" the next month because something reminded me of her, but she blocked me on Facebook and deleted my number). Actually after that I tried to text her about an "autism awareness" event near her because she told me she is on the autism spectrum, but she never replied and I didn't get a read receipt, so I think she's gone permanently. She flunked out of high school without graduating and was unable to get her GED despite being in her 20's, and also she couldn't figure out basic things like how to use Google Maps on her phone or how to see just one move ahead in chess (we played chess online once or twice), so I don't think it was a lie for me to tell her that I don't think she's smart after she asked me for my input on her attempts at math, but it hurt her feelings (I suspected it might), and yet despite that, her feelings have no impact on me, so I guess not caring about other people's feelings is a flaw of mine. In a text she expressed that she believes I think lowly of her, and that is 100% true because she is one of the most unintelligent, socially unskilled, undedicated, useless people I have ever met. Anyway, as a teen I've been told that I have "no filter" when it comes to what I say out loud, like in class, which has resulted in classmates laughing despite me not trying to say anything funny, and sometimes, especially over text or writing, it appears that I am blind to other people's feelings (I think this is what prompted some people who saw my texts with women to ask if I have autism, but as a child I saw doctors and was never given that diagnosis, and after reading through the symptoms as explained by autistic people on the internet I don't believe I have autism). I've been told that I "don't seem to care" what other people go through, and I guess when it comes to Ally's feelings (or really any other person's feelings) that is true. I guess she sort of broke up with me interpersonal relationship wise because of that, but I genuinely don't mind. You'd think I'd feel some sense of loss at having lost the only person other than my mother who communicated with me frequently and regularly for years, but I felt no sense of loss. Never even missed her (although I did think of her or was reminded of her a couple times, like when I passed by her Jewish synagogue that I attended with her once after she invited me). You'd think I would be sad that someone who talked to me for years permanently stopped talking to me, but I didn't feel anything, again because there was never a real, close relationship from me to her. Despite all this, maybe a year or six months before our platonic breakup happened, she started telling me about this guy who she was hanging out with one-on-one (I thought to myself at the time "How come she was hanging out with this guy one-on-one and not even asking me to hang out with her?"), a guy who eventually became her first ever boyfriend, and while hearing about this I felt a little bit jealous—why did she end up in a real boyfriend and girlfriend relationship and not me? Well I don't think it is possible for me to end up in one given how I am with people; I don't form or sustain real relationships. There have been people who commented on my Facebook posts and were nice to me but I don't think it would work out even if I tried because I don't care about them as people like with a care about their feelings; they're just sort of an accessory in my life. That being said, people with ASPD (AntiSocial Personality Disorder) aren't necessarily asocial the way I am. This is an aside, but given that I am superficially socially initially when I meet someone in-person, especially someone new, I don't know if "asocial" is the right word to use to describe me, maybe a better word is "self focused", “egocentric”, or "narcissistic", although I don't have explosive rage, easily hurt self-esteem, or abusive behavior the way people with Narcissistic Personality Disorder do. Going back to the sociopath Kanika Batra who has ASPD, she said on TikTok that she has a tier of friends who she cares more about than other people and who bring value to her life and a higher tier of friends who she is fiercely loyal to and would do anything for (she said she would help them bury a body and give them an alibi). I never even keep secrets for other people (if you tell me a secret I will probably reveal it to someone or maybe reveal it somewhere on the internet). I basically have one tier and it's "acquaintance" or "person who I used to interact with because we both wanted to play a game of pool or a board game or something". Like (excluding my relationship with my mother) there's nothing special to me about any interpersonal relationship that I've had since my early teens with maybe one or two exceptions (well I have had penis-in-vagina sex with a 22 year old woman named “Anna Clements” more than once when I was 18, but it was a short term thing brought about by her promiscuity due to a brain injury and/or mental illness, but we don't have a relationship. I kind of caught infatuated feelings for her or experienced a crush where I felt that I wanted a relationship, but it didn't work out. Also once when I was 22 I had a sort of platonic partnership with a woman named Kristian because my “Relationship Destruction Reflex” was in remission for a few months, but then it came back and I had panic attacks like I described before and I destroyed my relationship with Kristian with my anxiety and panic which made me really clingy, ultimately causing her to dump and block me. The platonic partnership with Kristian was actually a really unusual period in my life because my panic attack response, or "Relationship Destruction Reflex" as I called it, wasn't just in remission—I actually had the opposite response which actually felt good and made me look forward to communicating with her in the future, as there was a time where every day while we were apart she called me at 9PM and I looked forward to that, but as I said before eventually the chemical response I get from interacting with her or sending her communications changed and the relationship became impossible to sustain. I guess I haven't had any close interpersonal relationships with other males since my early teens, and the couple close interpersonal relationships that I've had with women were flukes that didn't last). When it comes to all these people who I mentioned in the previous sentence, we don't talk anymore (later on I tried to create an email list of my social media posts and include them on it, but they didn't want to receive my emails, and frankly nobody did). Sometimes I am a stalker and I stalk or cyber-stalk people, especially women, who I think I feel a strong attachment to (maybe I think I want them to love me or that I want to be their boyfriend), but again there's no real, close, lasting, bidirectional relationship with emotional caring there (although sometimes in a stalker-stalkee relationship, the stalker will think they have a real relationship with the stalkee, but the stalkee, or person being stalked, will not believe this, and typically the stalkee is right). There were many times where I believed I loved a (usually sexually attractive) woman who I knew for maybe two days, but looking back it was more of an obsession or a delusion/illusion of love and I never really loved her, and honestly I don't think I even ever truly cared about her, although I did believe that I cared about her and felt attachment during the time I believed I loved her (and I went through a very mentally and emotionally intense breakup in my mind after she stopped responding to me and basically told me that I have to stop trying to contact her and move on). What I described in the previous sentence happens pretty regularly for me, especially if my mood and labido is up as it tends to fluctuate with my bipolar disorder or schizoaffective disorder. Anyway, I remember one time when my mood was up I thought that if I were the only person on Earth and there were robots to keep everything including all the restaurants and websites and stuff working, I wouldn't be any less happy than I currently am. Like I mean sometimes I feel like playing a game of pool, and I might play a game against myself, but I would also be down to play against a real person, but playing a game of pool with a person doesn't bring me closer to them. If anything, playing a game of pool regularly with the same person for long enough results in us gradually playing together less and less often over time, eventually not playing together anymore (this happened with a neighbor I used to know, Willy). Everyone is just sort of an acquaintance or stranger to me, and the relationships fade or the interpersonal distance between us increases with time (or perhaps there was never a real relationship there to begin with and this fact just sort of materializes into apparent reality with time despite the fact that when we first met I said something like "Hi, I'm John, what's your name?" then shook their hand after hearing them utter their name that I will probably forget). It's kind of hard for me to explain what I mean by "asocial" because there's no such thing as "asocial personality disorder" and it doesn't mean that I have anything against people or want them to hurt themselves or anything like that (some people I actually have a positive opinion of or like), it's just sort of how I am. I don't think it's obvious to other people, and even to myself, that I am asocial because I am superficially social initially in person and I still go through the basic social gestures like making eye contact, introducing myself, and shaking hands, but these behaviors are just sort of an automatic initial thing and almost every time I forget their name (sometimes I get around this by sending myself a text with their name and description immediately after the introduction, but sometimes in a group even this isn't enough). Identifying as asocial (or someone who doesn't form and sustain real relationships with other people) also doesn't mean that I'm introverted, that I'm particularly shy, that I have autism, that I never enjoy activities that involve other people, or that I don't know or perform basic social gestures like shaking hands and asking you what you do for a living. I actually sometimes want to share information about myself and over-share information about myself, like what I'm doing in this essay to Social Security. Because everyone is just sort of a stranger or distant acquaintance to me and always will be no matter what, I don't have a problem with just dumping personal stuff on people and then never talking to them again. I don't really have boundaries, like I can just (verbally or in social media posts) dump my shit on anymore. More recently, like in April 2023, I switched from identifying as "an asocial person" to "a self-centered person", “an egocentric person”, or "a narcissistic person" (who doesn't meet the typical characteristics of a person with Narcissistic Personality Disorder) because I still write to people and post on social media, but all of it is about me or appears to show a lack of mental awareness of or care about other people's minds or what their feelings would be in response to reading my posts. Like most people post this smiling friendly social shit on social media but I will just drop “I've been so bored and lonely lately” in my Facebook status, and obviously that's not the content people want recommended to them in their social media feed, lol. I understand that at a logical level, like by using my brain, but I don't really care. I might have some sort of personality disorder. There are these people who call themselves "empaths" because they feel and experience other people's emotions very strongly, and I consider myself the reverse of that because even though I can determine what feelings other people give off, I don't experience those emotions at all myself. I have tried consciously pretending and lying to try and be like one of those “normal” prosocial people, but I can't keep it up long-term. There are some disadvantages with being the way I am like being unable to lead despite wanting to (I once ran for President of the United States in a manic state for maybe 6 months and the only person who donated to my campaign was my mother despite me spending thousands on political ads on social media) and being unable to get a girlfriend or long term female sexual partner despite wanting one, but that's just my reality. This is an aside, but as a non-famous, not particularly good looking, not particularly charismatic heterosexual man with no real relationships (except for the familial relationship with my mother), it is also a pretty rare event for me to get sex. Straight women usually want to get physical with their husband, fiancé, boyfriend, or at the very least a friend with benefits who they feel a real connection with, not some random distant acquaintance or stranger like myself. One time after having sex with a woman in the missionary position she told me (I don't remember her exact words) that it was like there was "nothing there", like as if I were looking "through her rather than at her"—"no connection" (I don't think she used all these exact words but that was the idea). That's not what women want. Women want to talk about themselves more than they listen to a man. Women want a man who remains genuinely interested in them and their life and who cares about them and their feelings, who wants to hear about their Christmas and know if they slept well last night and is interested in texts from them that say what they're doing today, and none of those things are true for me, at least beyond the initial meeting(s) or introduction(s). Straight women want a man who truly loves them as a person and doesn't just get infatuated or obsessed with them for a few months and then not care if they die. I regularly go years (sometimes about half a decade) at a time with zero sex of any sort despite being open to almost anyone with a vagina under 45 who I'm not afraid might try to kill me for not committing to her (just speaking loosely based on personal experience). I am almost always open to it when a woman expresses sexual interest, it's just a very rare thing for me as a guy with no real non-familial relationships for a woman to do that, and when a woman does randomly express sexual interest in me there is usually something wrong with her like some form of mental illness, homelessness, or brain injury (and yes, I have engaged with such women before, I've even made out with one homeless woman and was rejected by another who I took out to dinner after I saw her begging outside a restaurant, so my standards are extremely low). More often than a real woman expressing sexual interest in me, a catfish or scammer on a website like Instagram or TikTok does so by impersonating a woman and then trying to get me to invest in her crypto scam or receive a "donation" from a famous billionaire or pay for her nude cam website or something like that. It's a very rare, very random thing for a real woman to express any sort of sexual interest in me, either online or in person. Most young-ish straight men who don't get sex with women often don't actually know exactly why this is the case and tend to start by assuming superficial things like that women want a taller man with more money, but women aren't as superficial as men and, if they're in the mood, will have sex with a guy who isn't particularly tall or rich if he is her boyfriend who has a real, close, caring, truly loving, two-way relationship with her or she's fallen in love with him, like with attachment. Also, before my muscle rigidity caused my back to hunch over, I was 5'11" and making $86 an hour on W2 and got zero sex or girlfriends for years, so I don't think height or money was my problem. I once saw a hot woman married to a small, deformed, crippled man (who I admit had a good sense of humor) in an electric mobility scooter who presumably was like that before they met, I've watched a women hold hands with her partner who is significantly shorter than her, and I've seen a man with an ugly face (who appeared very caring and loving) with an average looking woman, so I know women aren't that superficial. I am worse at attracting women into a relationship with me than a small, deformed, crippled man in an electric mobility scooter and an ugly-faced man because of permanent differences between my personality and theirs which I never consciously chose. I have never been anyone's real husband, fiancé, or boyfriend, I don't have real, close, two-way relationships, and in almost every case where a woman has fallen in love with me, she has been severely mentally ill as usually only mentally ill or crazy people fall in love with random people who have no real relationship with them (sometimes people think they've fallen in love with a celebrity but that's not real love with a person and there is no real relationship there). As an example of a crazy person who believed they fell in love with me, one time a woman a couple years younger than me named "Deanna" who I knew for like an hour or two beforehand at this sort of group therapy place told me that she would have sex with me if I introduced her to everyone I knew as my girlfriend, and I basically said "no" (I felt literally nothing for her at the time and just wanted to fuck her in my dad's old SUV after the group therapy session), but some time after I was like "I change my mind, come back" and she was like "now that I know you, I wouldn't have sex with you if you were the last guy on Earth". Oh well. Anyway, I have met lots of very nice, good people, and maybe if I actually wanted to hear about their Christmas or genuinely and in a healthy, non-obsessive, non-stalker-ish way wanted to hear about their day or something like that we could be real friends in a bidirectional way, but to be honest I'm not interested and I can't even fake it so real relationship formation will never happen. If I really forced myself to have a connection with someone, it might trigger my "Relationship Destruction Reflex" that I talked about in the previous paragraph, causing me to have panic attacks or feel that I can't breathe until I destroy the relationship.

It is 11/19/2022 and I thought of some additional stuff related to being someone who doesn't have real relationships (I used the word "asocial" before but now I use the phrase "self focused", "self-centered", “egocentric”, or "narcissistic but without NPD"). Some people may have different notions of what a "real" relationship is. I previously mentioned the stalker-stalkee relationship. A stalker-stalkee relationship is not a real relationship the way say a boyfriend-girlfriend relationship is a real relationship. The person being stalked has, while they are ignoring, avoiding, blocking, or trying to get away from their stalker, no real relationship with their stalker as a person despite what their stalker might believe. Maybe one or even both of them believed they had something in the past, but at the time the stalking is happening there is no real relationship there other than what the stalker believes exists, what the stalker imagines in their head. Some people (especially stalkers) believe that they can obtain a real relationship with their stalkee, the sort of relationship they imagine exists in their head, by obtaining more information about their stalkee, like from the internet, but having information about someone doesn't necessarily mean you have a real relationship with them, even if you believe otherwise. For example, a stalker may Google someone's full name and find their email or online username and then Google those things to find all their social media, past blog posts, or podcasts, and binge through all of these sources of information about their stalkee to try and develop or feel a connection with them (something that I have done multiple times in the past), but doing these things does not cause a real relationship to exist, and the connection is unidirectional (from the stalker to the stalkee, but not the other way around). Real relationships are bidirectional and a stalker-stalkee relationship is not bidirectional. Conceptually it's very similar to the relationship a random US citizen might have with a US President who they have strong emotional feelings about, or a fan might have with a celebrity. They like the celebrity and consume all their social media, but there is no real, close, bidirectional relationship with genuine emotional caring there—the relationship only exists in their head, just like the stalker's relationship with their stalkee, and is more of an obsession or parasocial relationship than a real relationship. I have been the stalker before and I have even had someone who was very attached to me in their mind who I couldn't get rid of (I would say they meet the definition of a stalker but they're a mostly harmless mentally ill woman). In my experience the best thing to do about such people is to ignore, avoid, and block them, and try and make it so they can't find you, get to you, or interact with you. Engaging with them or interacting with them can just cause them to stalk you more, and doing things like sleeping with them can just increase their belief in the existence of a relationship between you two, and when it doesn't work out like they imagined it in their head they can become vengeful and might do something crazy like find your address on WhitePages.com, go to your house, and try to light it on fire or something like that. Stalkers may truly believe they love their stalkee, that they care about them and that there is a real relationship there, but it is a delusion because someone who really loves you as a person, cares about you with genuine feeling and actions, and supports you would not do something like trying to burn down your house while you're sleeping in it (I'm just using this as a hypothetical example, but you get the idea). There's a certain danger in someone else believing they currently have a close relationship with you when that relationship does not actually presently exist. I used to believe I had relationships with people, especially certain women who I liked and wanted to have sex with. Time and time again, reality proved to me that the relationship I believed existed and might exist in the future did not actually exist and would not exist in the future. And I'm done with it. I'm done with trying to get into a boyfriend and girlfriend relationship. I'm in a relationship with myself and that's the only relationship I'm able to be in. I used to search for board game events listed on websites like meetup.com and eventbrite.com to meet women who occasionally enjoy playing board games like I do in hopes of developing a relationship with one of them, but I don't do that anymore because it's futile—it's not like I'll ever talk to or hang out with anyone who I play board games with at one of these events outside of the event or form a real lasting friendship or relationship with anyone. Heck, I'm done with even trying to learn and remember other people's names. I don't actually (and will not in the future) have a real relationship with you, why should I bother asking for and remembering your name (as if I even could remember it without checking my phone)? When I go to a board game event and meet people I've never met before, I smile and shake their hands, but I'm not actually happy to see them; that smile is automatic or fake, it's just politeness. I have no interest in those people and they don't matter to me and never will matter to me. It's fake (as in the relationship is fake—I'm not really close to anyone, except maybe my mother, relationship wise, and while I may develop obsessions with people, I don't truly and genuinely, in a healthy prosocial manner, want to hear about their Christmas or their day or whatever). Or perhaps a better word than "fake" is simply that in reality there is "nothing there" with another person, and there never will actually be anything there. Like once a woman who I thought I fell in love with and who agreed to go on a walk with me told me after the walk that there was "nothing there" with me other than what I at the time imagined in my head, and I think that description of "nothing there" kind of applies to my relationships with everyone else. I may fall in a sort of short-term obsessive love sometimes, but after that fades away there is “nothing there”. All of my relationships are temporary (except for the closeness I have with my mother). I do not have the ability to have real, close, bidirectional relationships with other people. I have the ability to stalk people (especially women), but a stalker-stalkee relationship is not a real relationship, and it's not good for anyone. I learned the hard way that I cannot stalk my way into being a woman's boyfriend, fiancé, or husband—it will never happen and I'm done with that. I'm done with trying to be someone I'm not. I am asocial towards other people (or perhaps I'm just completely self-focused, self-interested, self-centered, egocentric, and/or narcissistic, I'll talk about that more in the next paragraph), and I have been that way for a long time, for at least as long as I've had discernible mental illness. That's just how I am. If I had the power to become a "normal" person, with real two-way friendships and intimate partnerships with other people, I would have made that choice in a heartbeat, but I can’t, and no psychiatric drug can fix me (and I have tried over 10 different ones including Lithium, Lamictal, Depakote, Carbamazepine, Topiramate, Saphris, Risperidone, Invega, Haldol, Latuda, and more). The initial and true reason I went on psychiatric drugs was not for primary symptoms of mental illness like mania or depression (even though when I went to my first psychiatrist I said that was the reason). The true reason was to try and change my personality and get a girlfriend, and it never worked. Before I developed mental illness (not including my childhood ADHD), when I was about 12 or 13 years old, there was this girl named "Cathy" I used to eat lunch with each day in an outdoor area behind the school, just the two of us, but then I developed my initial mental illness and changed and things didn't work out with us (in high school I wanted to go with her to the senior prom, but before the prom, when I asked her to join me on my regular walk on the beach, she frustratedly said that she was "not interested, never interested", which I still vaguely remember over 10 years later because it fucking hurt. I ultimately ended up going to the prom alone after multiple other rejections). After I graduated from that school (I went there for both middle and high school), I wanted to use psychiatric medication to fix me to make things work out interpersonal relationship wise in the future, but it never worked. Years after things stopped working with her (perhaps the reason things stopped working with her was because I became distant and/or completely self-focused/self-interested/self-centered/egocentric/narcissistic), Cathy blocked me for stalking/harassment. Even more years later, in 2019 (according to the Facebook messenger logs), from another Facebook account I used to go around her first Facebook block, I apologized to her and reminded her of us with a photo of the two pages she filled in my middle school yearbook where she wrote in a friendly manner about how we first met, but then she blocked that second Facebook account of mine as well. From high school on I had similar experiences (as my experience with Cathy) with many other women who I also felt I had fallen in love with, although she was the first. Cathy has since gotten married (from my second Facebook account I saw a profile photo of hers where a man was proposing to her), but my experience with her was one of the most emotionally painful and formative experiences of my life (I still to this day have a small teddy bear holding a heart that says "Love" on it which she gave me on Valentine's Day when I was maybe 13 years old) and what happened set my future objectives in life. I wanted to correct what happened, but maybe with another woman. I had dreams of marriage and I wanted one day to have children with a woman who I had fallen in love with (it's not unusual for me to fantasize about a future with a child with a woman who I had fallen in love with), but I don't see either marriage or children ever happening for me. I hate mental illness for ruining my life, but I'll hate my life even more if I get kicked off SSDI. As an atheist who believes in biology (I never chose to be an atheist, I'm just kind of hardwired to not be religious in the same way some men are hardwired to be gay), I see life pair off and reproduce itself, and I believe that's the purpose of life, or at least of my life as a heterosexual man, but I don't believe I'll ever be able to achieve my purpose as a lifeform. I've heard LGBTQIA+ people like Lady Gaga say things like "God makes no mistakes… I was born this way", but I think that's a load of overly nice bullshit people say to spread positive feelings and make other people feel good. When a horse has a baby with a visible birth defect, it is not uncommon for her to kill her baby after it's born (in some other species the mother eats the unhealthy or deformed cubs). Like the horse born with a birth defect, I am defective, a mistake, and I believe I as a human being at least deserve the right to put myself to sleep forever in the manner of my choosing, in accordance with my personal beliefs.

It is 3/19/2023 and I thought of one more social/interpersonal thing that is wrong with me. I've heard it said that if you just be yourself, people will gravitate to you. When I just be myself, people describe me as "exhausting", "obsessed with myself", "like a cross between autistic and narcissistic", or actually seem to want to get away from me or unsubscribe to me, or at the very least don't like the interaction with me (the most success I've ever had while online dating was actually by pretending and faking interest, which may have given them the impression that I love them as a person, but that put me in an immense amount of distress by setting off my "Relationship Destruction Reflex" that I talked about before). In high school my nickname was "Sheldon Cooper" from the TV show The Big Bang Theory because of how I was in my social interactions (I didn't watch this show until after I graduated from there but when I did watch it I became aware of how insulting that nickname is). I think the phenomenon of people not liking me being myself or not liking interacting with me is most evident in people's experiences with my social media, especially my Facebook, where I express my inner self. In "normal" people's social media, they seem to want to appear friendly, welcoming, and happy, and share the good feelings. It seems that they want to invite the viewer in. My social media seems to be the opposite of that. Whereas a normal person's social media might include photos of smiling people and say something like "had a wonderful time with my beloved <INSERT_PERSON>" and get lots of likes, my social media might say something like "I hate my life and wish for euthanasia" (where a doctor puts me to sleep forever) and get no likes despite having some views. Like I look at my social media and it's horrible (it's not uncommon for people who see it to unfollow me on Facebook or unfriend me). Or my social media will share way too much information about myself in a one-sided manner such that nobody cares to read it (except for maybe my mother). I have no boundaries. To give you an idea of the kind of stuff I post on social media, I have in the past taken quotes out of this essay/journal and posted it on social media. My cousin Karina ("Kara") doesn't have a Facebook, but I wanted to share my posts with her because I wanted to be close to her, so I started emailing them to her and some other people who I like or who were significant in my life, and she replied telling me to stop emailing her (which I guess is not surprising because it was mostly me ranting about how I can't get a girlfriend, making educated guesses about what is wrong with me that is the reason, and ultimately saying "I've kinda just accepted that I'm going to die alone"). I thought her telling me to stop emailing her was brutal because if she wasn't relatively close family I wouldn't have shared my inner self with her, but apparently she didn't like my inner self, and from personal experience nobody does, but that's the natural, authentic me. Another person, my neighbor Willy, responded to my email list by writing "John, I appreciate that you thought of me enough to add me onto this email list, but I don't use gmail to read people's navel-gazing rants. Please remove me. Thank you." I realized that nobody wanted to read me express my inner self, so for like a day (on April 13, 2023) I tried to pretend to be a different person, and tried to show love, care, and interest in others (even though in reality I don't care), but pretending made me hate myself and ultimately I ended up taking out those feelings on my mother who I live with (she was like "maybe we need to raise the dose of your medication because you are acting really moody and antisocial towards me"), and then I realized that no making people who don't matter to me like me is worth destroying my relationship with my mother, so I stopped that and then went back to normal. I am who I am and that's who I will be. Going back to my Facebook, I get very little interaction with my posts on social media. One person who I used to play pool with (Willy, the guy who unsubscribed to my emails) told me that when he sees a Facebook posts of mine, he reads it and silently judges me without interacting with it (as do other people), and he said that I should keep the stuff I post on social media in my head. He said my posts show no awareness of other people, they're often like I'm thinking out loud. My mother looked at one of my Facebook posts on May 12, 2023 and read it out loud with me and the impression I got from it was that it was like I showed no mental awareness of other people, I guess I'm sort of mentally blind to other people, especially when I am writing or posting to the void. One guy who I sometimes used to eat lunch with in high school told me over Facebook messenger that I "overshare my distress" on social media. My mother told me that I provide way too much information about myself on social media and that other people don't care. She said that I shouldn't just dump my personal shit on social media, but I do it anyway. Anna Clements, this one woman with a traumatic brain injury and mental health problems who I had sex with a few times in college when I was 18 (I kind of became obsessed with her and wanted to become her boyfriend but she told me I would "make a horrible boyfriend", which fucking hurt) but who later cut off all contact with me (she sent one or maybe two short email replies after blocking me on social media and blocking my phone), before cutting off contact with me, told me in an email that she could not call me a friend (despite me believing that she was my closest and most enduring female friend) and that "you don't know what people are going through, and based on my interactions with you and on what I've seen of your social media presence [which is mostly self-focused/self-interested/self-centered/egocentric/narcissistic ranting on Facebook], you don't care." I don't know, but I guess that makes sense given that I never ask people I know (or used to know) how they're doing (perhaps I don't care). She used to be the only person other than my mother who regularly liked my posts on Facebook, but I never looked at her Facebook posts unless I developed an obsession with her and was sort of cyber-stalking her (which was when I would go on her Facebook wall and her Instagram and go through all her old photos/posts at once, and then chat with her to try to pull her back to me). Switching to a different woman, one time I matched with a woman on a dating app and she asked me "How are you?" and I replied (with my total lack of boundaries) that I wanted to kill myself, and she was like "I can't handle this shit from a stranger" and unmatched me. I don't know. I really didn't mind at all that she unmatched me. I don't really know why I am the way I am. Maybe I am mentally unaware of other people (I mean I'm aware that other people exist, I can see them with my eyes, but maybe mentally it's like I am all there is)? It's okay, I don't feel that I really need any friends. I guess I write about what is significant to me and what I care about, and really all that is is me and my personal struggles in life. Like I generally agree with the Democrats on most issues, but I don't care about the world being destroyed by global warming because only 4°F of warming is predicted by year 2100 and by the time year 2100 rolls around I'll be dead. If there was any chance of me having grandkids I would care for my grandkids as a continuation of me but I can't even get a wife so I don't see grandkids happening for me. At this point in life, in my depression where I can't enjoy things like music or reading, my greatest desire and greatest source of happiness is food that I want to eat. Like I might feel like "I want a chicken sandwich" or maybe a chicken burrito or something but there is no cooked chicken in the fridge, so I struggle despite my muscle rigidity to get to the nearest restaurant to my house to buy food (sometimes I can't walk but I can scooter so I use that), and if I manage to make it and eat the food I feel happy, and really at this point in my life that is my #1 source of happiness and my biggest concern. I am concerned that if my disability benefits get cut I won't be able to get food. My mother already told me that if my disability benefits get cut she won't give me any money and I have to pay her money to sleep in the bedroom I grew up in (I get a great deal on rent relative to what a stranger would charge), so I would really be in a predicament if I get kicked off disability benefits.

It is 4/16/2023 and I noticed something interpersonally different between myself and other people that I wanted to add to this essay, but I didn't know where to add it, so I'm adding it here. Sometimes people on my Facebook make posts that say things like "I feel like I'm going insane" or "I feel very depressed today" or "feeling very not good today 😢" or something like that. I've noticed that most people, if they respond to these posts, they respond by long holding on the "👍like" button and then selecting the "sad" emoji (😢) or maybe the "care" emoji (🫂) or perhaps writing a comment asking "Why?". I know I could select one of those responses, and I know that if I wanted to show sympathy I would select one of those, but instead I just give it a regular "👍 Like", which to me is sort of equivalent to me commenting "Cool". I mean it's not like I want them to feel sad today, but I also don't care that they're feeling sad today, I just like that they're sharing their feelings publicly and I'm letting them know I saw their post. Like I am aware of what the sympathetic response would be, it's just that to me it seems like everyone is so distant from me that the emotional distance makes me not care (or maybe I just don't feel their feelings, but not in an autistic way). Like if I wrote a post on Facebook that said "Feeling very depressed today" and one person responded with the "😢" emoji and another person responded with "👍 Like", I would get the impression that the first person cares about my feelings and sympathizes and the second person doesn't care and doesn't sympathize. My normal response is like the second person. There is some ambiguity as to what "empathy" or "sympathy" is, like what exactly is a person who lacks those things. Like if I informed you about a person in central Africa with the same name as yourself who has clinical depression right now, your response would probably be "I don't care" or at the very least "none of my concern". That's not a sign that you have a lack of empathy (you are aware that clinical depression sucks), your response is just a result of great interpersonal distance, so you don't sympathize as much. That being said, if your loved one (who you are close to) had clinical depression, you would probably care. If you didn't care about that, then that would be a sign that you lack sympathy (some people would use the word "empathy" in this context, but empathy, like cognitive empathy, is more about the ability to put yourself into someone else's shoes using your brain through mental projection while sympathy is more about feeling their pain or suffering yourself). Like to me it just feels like every other human (except maybe my mom) is so distant that they're like that random stranger on another continent, if that makes any sense, so I don't sympathize with them. Like I can tell if someone's voice sounds happy or sad or if their face looks visibly depressed or whatever (I may not suck in their sadness like some sort of empath but I can recognize that a person is depressed). In that regard I have social ability, and I can mentally project between them and myself, indicating that I have empathy (which is like "theory of mind", which I'll talk about later), I just lack sympathy. Like some people think people with autism lack sympathy, or that people with AntiSocial Personality Disorder lack sympathy, or that a military leader lacks sympathy, but really these are different things. Like people with autism have trouble determining whether other people are interested in their speaking or are showing certain emotions, but once they do determine those things, they may have the same response as a neurotypical person, so perhaps a better way of describing what they have is a lack of social awareness or ability rather than a lack of sympathy. I don't have autism. A person with AntiSocial Personality Disorder may take pleasure in and have no remorse about beating the shit out of someone they don't like or aren't friends with, or breaking up their marriage or something like that, but part of the reason they take joy in those things is because they know it hurts the other person. Like it's not like people with AntiSocial Personality Disorder aren't aware that punching someone in the face hurts, they just enjoy causing pain. Like what they actually have (in many cases) is sadism. I don't have that. Well I have a little bit of sexual dom/sadism rather than sexual sub/masochism, but I'm not super into BDSM. Anyway, lastly, the military leader. A military leader has to give orders that result in people getting killed. When people inevitably do get killed, they don't cry over it. Is this a lack of sympathy? I think it is. In that regard I think I have the same lack of sympathy that a military leader would have. Like I feel like I could give orders that would result in many deaths, no problem. I mean I don't want people to die, but I also wouldn't cry over it, if that makes any sense. That being said, I'm still extroverted and a nice person to strangers. I enjoy giving money to homeless people, I feel happiness when I do it. When I shake someone's hand for the first time I automatically and involuntarily smile. When a stranger on Reddit asks a question about something that I know I can help with I like providing that help. Like just because I don't personally care about or feel your feelings doesn't mean that I'm not going to be nice. One therapist said that it seems like I have issues with "theory of mind", which is like visualizing other people's minds, but I don't think that's correct, and here's an example of why. I can visualize you as the person reading this as being very bored (you don't care, this is not interesting to you). I can visualize how excruciatingly long this read is for you (and it will only get worse as this body of writing drags on). I just don't care. I am aware of how dismissive that previous sentence is of your feelings and how asshole-ish it comes off. I am able to put myself into your shoes; I have theory of mind, which is closely related to empathy. It may seem like I don't have conscious awareness, but I do, I just don't give a damn about how incredibly bored you are by reading this (you probably gave up reading before getting to this point). What I lack is not theory of mind or empathy but sympathy. I can visualize your emotions, but I am not sympathetic to them (they are sort of separate from me). Pretty much everyone (except maybe my mother and myself) is nothing to me. Perhaps that is why I have no relationships to other people (I use the word "to" rather than "with" because it's possible for someone else to have imaginary attachment to me in their mind without having a real, bidirectional relationship with me as a person, and it's possible for me to have the same sort of thing towards like a crush or minor celebrity or something). It's not other people; it's me (well in rare cases there is something wrong with the other person, but the vast majority of the time there is nothing wrong with the other person and something wrong with me). 

It is 4/16/2023 and I thought about some more examples of how I lack sympathy. There have been instances where people I know have died. For example, that therapist who said she thinks I lack "theory of mind" died of breast cancer. My high school biology teacher died of old age related reasons (I saw the post on Facebook, people other than me responded with sad 😢 emojis but I did not). My grade school football coach (I didn't take football or know him personally) died in a motorcycle accident. In all these cases, I was not sympathetic. With the therapist and the teacher, my response to their deaths was something like "good, I didn't like them" (the therapist insistently accused me of lying when I wasn't lying and the biology teacher gave me an F on my science project and did some other little things like ask for food from kid's lunches in exchange for extra credit and accidentally showed the same educational video two days in a row). Like I genuinely don't care that they died (maybe the therapist should have received physician assisted suicide to make her death painless, but other than that I have no problem with her death). With the school football coach my reaction was like "That idiot shouldn't have been riding a motorcycle at 2AM". During the football coach's in-school funeral that I was required to attend I vaguely remember Cathy (my first crush) sitting next to me (we were just friends) and saying something like "You're being disrespectful" because I was playing some game or doing homework or something in my chair during the funeral (which I will admit in retrospect was disrespectful), and I don't know if I said this out loud at the time but I was like "Dude shouldn't have been riding a motorcycle at 2AM". Like I understand that death by motorcycle accident must be very painful and that normal, mentally healthy people don't desire to die, but you gotta take care of your life if you want to live. I dunno. Like if someone who diets and exercises all their life dies of heart disease at 50 that's unfortunate, but if you consumed lots of sweets, McDonald's, and Coca-Cola all your life (which I intentionally don't do ever) and that happens, what I believe is you kind of brought it upon yourself, and I have a similar attitude towards the football coach. No sympathy.

It is 4/21/2023 and this will be my last paragraph on social/interpersonal stuff before going on to the fifth reason I'm not working. I once saw Rick Scott, one of my two Florida state senators, say in a speech that he has five perfect grandchildren (I think the number is more now). Aww, how cute. I can guarantee you that they are not actually all perfect, and if that's not apparent at early ages, I'm sure one of them eventually will like maybe get addicted to drugs or develop a mental illness or something else that is definitely not perfect. That being said, people say stuff like "You're perfect, exactly as God made you" to show love, like as a verbal act of love. On Instagram, from the account @stayclosetoyourself_ , I saw a post that says "People that love you care about how they make you feel". They say things like "You're perfect just the way you are", or when someone (like Ally, who I talked about before) texts "How is my math?" they text back something nice like "You know, it could be better, but even Einstein failed at math" (which by the way is an untrue thing that she believes) instead of texting what I texted, which was more like "You are unintelligent and would be better off applying for jobs like being a bagger at a grocery store or a dishwasher", which I'm sure made her feel bad or inferior even though I believe it's true. If the quote "People that love you [as a person] care about how they make you feel", then I don't really love other people [as a person]. I mean I believe I love my mother (if I don't love her, then I don't love anyone on Earth). She is very loving (to me, and I'll refrain from saying anything bad about her because I guess I love her in the way I am capable of having love for another person, so at least we're close), but if she died and I had to pay for her death/funeral expenses I would spend the least amount of money possible (it's not like she would be alive to enjoy her own funeral). So yeah, mom, if you're reading this, set aside your own money for that stuff before it happens and make plans for that yourself. So yeah, that's kind of how I am. Oh, and I love my Dad, but it's more of just an internal feeling with no real-world acts behind it, like I never call him and I'm pretty rude or disrespectful to him. Anyway, multiple people who I have met in my college and adult life have told me that I'm extroverted and nice, but the person in this essay is the real, inner me. Instead of telling people what would make them feel good or what they want to hear, I tell them what I believe to be factually true. I guess I can have like a feeling in my heart, but perhaps my love is like the sort of love one could have for an inanimate object, sort of like how "I love sushi" or the feeling I get when I see or pet cute animals, if that makes any sense. I don't care about sushi's feelings, but I love sushi, and I guess that's the sort of love I have. I can see other people's feelings, and I can sometimes even predict how they would feel in response to something (like I'll have a feeling like "They probably won't like this" just as I'm about to hit "Send"), but I do not care about their feelings enough (i.e. love them enough as a person) to say something that I do not believe to be factually true to make them feel good or to boost their self-esteem. Like there was this one trans woman I followed on Instagram due to her leftist content, and in addition to that she also posts gym selfies on her Instagram story, and to one of the gym selfie stories I was about to privately reply "nice body for a trans woman", but I changed it to "very nice body for a trans woman" because I wanted to compliment her. She created a public follow up story screenshotting my response and writing (I don't remember the exact words but it was like) "WTF is wrong with some people, this is not a compliment 🤣". I thought it was a compliment because I am completely heterosexual and biologically male features (which a lot of trans women have) disgust me sexually and I could not see any on her, and I said all that to her in a private reply to her follow-up story. She was very hurt by that and wrote something like "Yeah, well you have female features and you're ugly and I would never have sex with you" and then blocked me. LOL. I'm sorry, miss. I mean I was a fan, but what am I supposed to write, "Gorgeous 😍". Haha, I would never write that. Not to her and not to anyone. I don't feel that. If I did write that it would just feel like I was lying or pretending, and it might trigger my "Relationship Destruction Reflex" that I talked about before. As another example, I was messaging with a religious woman on Instagram who publicly declared that she wanted a husband and kids, and I was like "Omg I would like a wife and kids", and she started writing about how God fearing and Jesus loving she is, and my reply was "Okay, I'm not religious but I don't care if someone else is religious" (which I felt was not what she wanted to hear), and she responded by blocking me immediately. Like what am I supposed to do, lie and say "Omg me too, I love Jesus, let's get married and make babies together"? That's not authentic. I believe it is impossible for me to be authentic and also have and sustain relationships with other people. Like I have some form of empathy from my brain in that I can hear happiness in someone's voice or see sadness on their face (I have looked at a very depressed person's face and posture and been able to tell that they are depressed) and I can (at least sometimes) tell when someone is not going to like what I'm about to communicate to them, but I have no choice but to communicate it because the alternative would be to lie or pretend or have panic attacks (via my "Relationship Destruction Reflex"). I mentioned "Relationship Forming Vibes" before and how I can't give them off without triggering my "Relationship Destruction Reflex" panic response. Like even if I wanted to try and give other people good, positive feelings, like for example via my social media posting, I can't do it, and I have tried multiple times. If I made a social media post that gave off bad feelings and was sort of self-focused, self-centered, or egocentric and said something like "I'm hungry but can't walk to the nearest restaurant due to muscle rigidity in my legs, fuck my life", that would not trigger my "Relationship Destruction Reflex" and I would be fine posting it, but if I made a post that gave off good feelings and was you-focused or you-centered instead and said (for example) "Your job is not to be liked by everyone, your job is to be and love yourself", it would trigger my unrelenting panic response and I would be forced to delete it (and I have tried to post this exact quote three times and had to delete it each and every time). The analogy I like to give is if every time you give someone a hug you experience a panic attack or a painful electric shock, you're going to stop wanting to give hugs. My "Relationship Destruction Reflex" is kind of like that, except instead of it being giving other people hugs it is giving other people love for them as a person which gives them good feelings (especially good feelings about themselves), which is what I call "Relationship Forming Vibes". In the context of the hugs metaphor, I don't want to give “hugs” anymore. For me love is more of an internal feeling than an act if that makes any sense. This is an update on 7/17/2023, but I've been recording myself with my phone while interacting with people and I kind of get the impression that even though I understand that other people have wants, I really don't care about their wants because the only person's wants I care about are my wants. This works fine for transactional things like I want a sandwich and you want money so I give you money in exchange for a sandwich, but this mentality doesn't work for things like marriage and having children with another person. But yeah, by this point I've made my best effort in that area of life and I'm done with the whole trying to date and have relationships with other people thing—by this point everyone who used to be a friend to me in real life has left me or told me not to contact them anymore. Sometimes I see parents with children and think I would love that myself, and I have decided against getting a vasectomy because I actually want to have a child even though absolutely nobody wants to be the mother of my child, but yeah, I've basically given up at this point.