Pain

It's bad form to talk about yourself, but I don't have any readers anyway, so why not?

I've always had a weird relationship with pain. I am extraordinarily non-pain-tolerant; and if I have to "cause" the pain myself I become positively pain-avoidant. I put up with allergy shots for seven years or so, but I could have never given them to myself. If I ever become diabetic, I might as well just shoot myself.

I've always thought that my inability to work the social/dating scene (or, for that matter, to even find it) was mostly laziness, with some fear-of-crowds thrown in. And while I am still an amazingly lazy person, and I don't like crowds, I am starting to think that the pain issue might be the biggest block. High school was what it was -- no one expected any better and that's all right then. But the women I went to college with were experts; they could make borrowing a pen a painful experience. (Compare "Have you ever had Professor X before? Is he any good?" with "Have you ever had Professor X before? My boyfriend's on the football team. Is Professor X any good?" For that matter, compare "You can give me a call; if I'm not in, leave a message" with "Give me a call. No one will be there to answer it, because both I and my roommate really live on the other side of campus in our boyfriends' rooms, but we check our messages every day or two" in a situation where I was being asked a favor. And I did it anyway.)

But I find myself avoiding any situation where someone could make any sort of personal comment at all. Work--no problem--even out for drinks afterward. But talking to someone who doesn't have to remember that they have to see me in the office every day? I'm avoiding it (I can't even bring myself to look things up on the internet, and you know that's bad), and I can't see how it's going to happen (even when someone has tried to shame me into leaving the apartment, it hasn't happened). But in the long run that's okay, because I am Broken.

(This has been part one of many in the series "Whiny Narcissism".)