No.306409
A lot of people on here, me included struggle with community, relationships with people, family, in general.
Many also describe horrid childhood experiences, neglectful or overprotective parents, abuse, bullying and the like.
I too had my fair share of misery, lack of love, despite best efforts from my mother. (Yet maybe I didn't reciprocate/feel such, despite observing the effort.)
This made me wonder, what do I even expect out of people?
What would an ideal family life look like?
What would feeling loved feel like? (However ridiculous that sounds.) What actions would need to be taken by who for me to feel such a thing?
What do I actually expect from a "friend"? How do I want them to feel about me, to interact with me? How should I engage with people in general?
What boundaries should be set?
I feel like with friendships I often gave my entire being or idk. like I usually had 1 very close friend and nobody else, of course they had multiple friends, always.
I just can't handle many people at once, I struggle with shallow relations because navigating such is beyond me.
I honestly don't know.
I feel like I've had some magical expectations about relationships (I use this word, but this doesn't mean succs or sexual) that simply don't seem to manifest.
Maybe things weren't that bad, maybe I'm just broken in some way.
I just don't know what I would want a good parent to be either. Maybe someone I can confide in regardless of the issue, someone who would have helped me navigate the world?
Someone to teach me to be a person?
I don't know. I often lament my childhood, my lack of development, the lack of warmth, the dread of fearing for my life each night, but realistically this might just have been me.
I mean, my parents also had horrid childhoods themselves so maybe this is just what it's like.
I'm a weak person, just reading about "bad" stuff "realistic" stuff makes my stomach sink, my chest tight and just… hurt me.
I like to read manga and what sparked this thread I'll be honest is that I decided to re-read "Mushoku Tensei - Jobless Reincarnation" which I dropped many years ago because it felt too real.
The human interactions shown are not clean at all. Like I prefer in my manga, clean, direct, cliche, no rough edges etc. This wasn't it. It hurt multiple times.
Then I realized as I powered through that this is still some ideal fatasy crap compared to the REAL REALITY and then made me wonder if I just expected too much.
At the end of the day, I know I'm weak. The MC powered through and things worked out, but that was because the other parties involved also cared. I don't know if I had the power to just deal with things when I could barely stomach reading a fantasy character go through such.
I feel like if one thing, I would have liked some help, some mentorship which might have helped if I had a father in my life instead of a source of life ending terror.
Maybe I should have grown myself somehow. I don't know. The character picked himself up somehow… Which makes me feel like it's all my fault. Might be true too which is why I'm trying to figure things out.
Being 30, officially starting life as a "middle aged man" might be a bit too late to start figuring things out too. How to be a human when the opportunities are no longer there.
I hope the mentioning of this manga doesn't completely write of what I had to say. Please do share your thoughts and experiences on the matter.
I was debating whether to post this on /dep/ or /lounge/, but I felt like it might fit here better.
I couldn't come up with a proper thread title either.
No.306410
>The character picked himself up somehow… Which makes me feel like it's all my fault. Might be true too which is why I'm trying to figure things out.
Notice how he described being bullied in his past life, and we also don't know exactly how his parents were. But when he got a loving family, true friends and supportive mentors in the isekai world, things worked out for Rudeus.
Well, that's what we kinda lack. We are different in some way, so people osctracize us, so we don't develop meaningful, supportive relationships and that leads us to becoming more different, which ostracizes us more which leads to not getting supportive relationships… You get the idea. It's a spiral, it's hard to get out the deeper you go.
So, to answer your question, I don't want anything, now at least. I want to go back and rewind my life and be normal (like it's possible, heh) and only then I can have something resembling a normal social life. I can't pick up the pieces and do something about myself now, it's too late. I know, I know the typical "it's over," but it's really over. It's hard to raise above the older you get.
No.306411
>>306410Samefag, sorry.
Anyway, about wanting a mentor and such. Not possible. People see you being all alone and think it's your own doing or your own choice.
Like, I visited many shrinks and they slapped SzPD or AvPD diagnoses on me like I wanted the life of solitude. Like I didn't try to make friends and was rejected or even beaten for asking, like I didn't try making imaginary friends and thinking my 2D waifu loves me to cope with loneliness, like I didn't become clueless and disinterested when it comes to xxx because I'm so repulsive I can't imagine myself in such scenario and turned to wizardom. No, it's your choice, your doing, or you have a """disorder""" that makes you want to be all alone.
People really do think you don't take enough showers or you like it that way do they don't bother helping you.
Truly, I wouldn't mind a true friend, but such friend probably thinks I should be left alone because I'm too unapproachable (read: ugly and retarded).