(WARNING: Vent approaching.)
Sometimes I don't know why I bother.
From time to time, when I can afford it, I go down a pub in my home town and attempt to meet people. I even try to appear presentable as well. Invariably I end up alienating them, never know what to say or anything, and/or end up excluded from any conversation for the most part. Or I get carried away by something I can go on about from now till eternity, which tends to contribute to alienation and so forth of other people. This leads to additional drinking which in turn leads to me feeling like death warmed up the next day, with nobody to blame but myself for such.
Like I said, I don't know why I bother considering that regardless of where I go or anything, unless I meet someone I know, I end up thoroughly bored and lonely and hating every moment of it. It's like everyone else on the planet has an instruction manual on getting along with people and I don't. Even up at college I don't really feel I can talk to people so easily because I don't know how to socialise with them, how to keep peoples' interest in groups, what the right thing to say at the right time is, and so forth, or how to break into a conversation. Especially when there's a group of people I sometimes seem to have mild panic attacks, like my skull's one of those lightning in a bottle things that I can't remember the name of because everything's moving too fast for me to process it all and work out what the right thing to say is. And I can never detect when is the right time to chip in correctly as well.
Someone I sort of knew about a year ago but have since lost contact with said I came over as "emotionally cold" and "always on edge." Quite a few other people I've met have said that I may well be an aspie. They may be right. But I don't want to end up with any such diagnosis because that sort of mud sticks and would only make things worse.
Don't get me wrong, I can talk about stuff if I know it and there's an obvious thing to talk about, and it's something I know about, but anywhere else... no. And I can talk to people in, say, a business capacity and suchlike but nothing else. I can debate and politick and so forth, even to an openly hostile audience, with no real problem, but I can't mix with people socially. This has ever been so, and I think it's because socialising is something you can't really prepare for in the way you can prepare for a speech or a presentation or suchlike, and if you seem like you've prepared what you're going to say in a social situation you come across as a bit of an oddball and people see through it.
Like I said, sometimes I don't know why I bother.
I'm not going to the fucking Freud Squad over this, before anyone asks. That I was seconded to in my second year of university and did Sweet Fanny Adams to solve anything so after a few weeks I quit it. Besides, I can't afford that sort of thing anyhow... there is a recession on yano!
(Vent over.)