Normalcy

I've been in a lot of those deep, introspective moods lately.  E3 is going on and by all accounts I should be excited and talking about that, but everyone else is excited and talking about that, so let's actually make the title of this blog make sense and talk about some of my experiences in life.  This is "The Bre2nan Experience" after all.

I haven't really made any new friends in the three years I've been at OIT.  Sure, I've met people, and even got a few minor friendships going, but none of the real good, steady friendships I used to have back in high school.  As much as I thought my life sucked back then, at least I had people to complain about it with.  They're all still around, and I still talk to most of them, but engaging in our good old-fashioned shenanigans is rather complicated when I am a full 200 miles away for most of the year.

And so I've been thinking lately, why is this?  What changed?  Why can't I see eye-to-eye with anyone here long enough to form any sort of connection.  Well, I think I came up with a fairly good explanation of what is going on.  Most of my really good friends have been screwed up in some way: one was a jittery autistic kid who spoke jibberish most of the time, one was a ritalin junkie who played with stuffed animals up until he was thirteen, and one pretty much goes through the same shit I do plus the occasional panic attack.  They all have slightly more issues than I do, and being in a larger social environment where I was pushed aside and openly mocked for being just a little bit different than everybody else, it felt good to know that there were people out there who had it worse than I did.

The "straight man" I became for the most part, up until I got started at OIT and discovered, at least from my perspective, that the only ones here were *shudder* normal people.  Those medication junkies I loved to hang around before didn't last long before dropping out or spending every cent to their name on Amazon purchases and weed, and since I inexplicably keep getting good grades, I linger on.

I've now started doing *shudder* job interviews.  Great!  I felt like the crazy guy in regular everyday interaction, but now when I get a shave and a haircut, dress down in business attire, and start talking about my future ambitions, I feel like a downright imposter.  "Detachment" is a pretty good one-word description; I've never really felt like just part of everyone else.  I was different, I knew it, and it forever skewed my psyche.  My old adaptation mechanism that had served me well all those years wasn't going to cut it at OIT or in the business world, and now I have been forced once again to cope with the social detachment that has followed me throughout my life, now with the only respite being the calm spots between waves of crushing loneliness.

So how do I survive?  Where do I go from here?  Well, it's obvious, isn't it: I need to learn how to be the screwed-up guy and love it.  It's only when I'm not ashamed of my own quirks that I can really gain back the confidence I once had when I surrounded myself with people who were (or at least I percieved them to be) crazier than I was.  It's gonna take some doing, lifetime patterns of thought can't just be willed out of existence, but it's something I have to do, and something I will do as part of my first steps into the rest of my life.