The Sorrow and the Self-Pity

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I don’t advise you read any further, what follows is merely generic angst, and lots of it. For those of you who do continue, I beg you forgive any solecisms and garbled composition, since I’m not well composed myself right now.

I’m in a really shitty mood this evening, I just got back to the Washington suburbs from Philadelphia (really much nicer ciy than I
imagined, great museums) for the weekend. I was visiting a girl I met and became good friend with while living in China. Now that we’re both back in America, I decided to see if she was interested in pursuing a ‘more than friends’ relationship. She was not. I was not really ready for the nature of her rejection (too much to get into here).

This is the latest and worst blow I’ve recently suffered. And now I’m not feeling interested in any aspect of my life right now. I’m just so alone, what with moving into a new apartment with no one I know, working a job by myself at night, attending a desultory series of classes at an anonymous community college, completely unattatched, unhinged, unloved, unlovable. Solitude. The solitude is overwhelming me. I mean, I’m 26 years old, it’s time to make some fucking progress with my life. What the hell am I doing wrong?

Let me tell you a bit about myself, for perspective. Back when I was 19, 20 years old, my life sucked. I was fat, unhealthy, video-game addicted, unschooled, misanthropic, directionless, hermit-like, hopelessly depressed (with good reason) and just generally
uninteresting and pathetic. I wasn’t at all proud at what I was or what I was becoming.

Well, it’s been six years since those days, before I made a conscious effort to turn my life around. I thought if I made sure I did interesting things, took risks, all that road-less-traveled bullshit, I’d find myself doing fufilling, interesting things, and meet people who appreciated the same things I did, people who would fit with my idiosyncracies.

And I was right! All that happened! Again and again, I went to college, I lost more than 100 pounds (my secret? Diet and exercise, I’m applying for a patent), traveled a bit around America, then to Spain for a semester, went to Italy for a summer, Spain again and then to China for a year. I learned a lot, met great people, expanded my horizons. My project was an almost unqualified success!

Almost. The qualifier: I’m still alone. Six years, and only one serious relationship. A handful of serious heartbreaks, serious hopes, and serious dissapointments. I kept thinking I’d find someone, just keep at being myself, doing my own thing, etc.

But it’s all led here, I’m back in fucking Northern Virginia. Maybe I’m smarter, hopefully wiser. I thought I’d be more interesting; but no one’s interested, and no one ever is.

To add to my general distress, the girl is one of the few people with whom I felt a close, comfortable bond of frienship, and now I’ve lost that, as well.

Now, for the first time in my life I’m completely independent. I am no longer receiving even nominal support from my parents (which I don’t need, but was symbolically much more important than I realized), I’m not attatched to any kind of real educational program, I’m just some guy with a job and a car and health insurance and vague hopes for the future, but less and less optimism.

I’m sorry to subject you all to such baroque self-indulgence, but it just started to spill out. I don’t know what I need, but it feels a little bit better to get it off my chest.

2

I’m glad you feel better, and I’m sorry life is sucking. You’ll get lots of “Oh, quit your whining” posts in a while, I imagine, but I know what you mean- sometimes you gotta get it out.

I hope that now that it’s out, you can regroup, get it together, and meet some new people. Have you been to any M.A.D. dinners or activities? (Mid-Atlantic Dopers) There are always threads about them in MPSIMS, and in fact there is one next Tuesday (at a yet to be determined location) evening. I’m talking about just meeting friends, by the way- it’s not like a big dating scene or anything.

Take care.

3

It’s difficult to know how to respond to this without resorting to cliches, so apologies in advance…

First, you ARE interesting. This is obvious from your post, and from the way you write - you write beautifully.
Whenever I get back from a trip, even a short one, there’s always that depressing feeling - all that effort, just to end up back here? You have been away travelling for years, and now, as you say, “its all led here” - sounds like the same sort of feeling on a larger scale.

I think the important thing to remember is that you have not actually “ended up” anywhere. You are only 26, your adventures are not over, you are not compelled to stay in Virginia, you could meet someone exciting tomorrow, or next month. Life can go flat, when there’s nothing on the horizon, but it really doesn’t last - trust me.

I’m older than you by 15 years, so I know your worries about being single at 26 are a bit premature to say the least - on the other hand I remember being 22 and convinced I was doomed to a life of solitude. I wasn’t and you aren’t - (cliche coming now…) there are millions of single women out there, you’ve just got to raise the odds on finding a sympathetic partner by meeting lots of them. Unattached does not equal unlovable.

PS: Have you got any really old friends - from school or whatever? Now might be a good time to get back in touch…

4

Yeah, sounds like a textbook case of post-travel blues to me, especially the bit about how no one is interested in everything you’ve done. If they haven’t had those experiences themselves, they won’t get it. If you want to see exactly how common this is, go to the Lonely Planet Thorn Tree and do a search on “returning home,” “reverse culture shock,” and similar phrases.

Of course the best cure is planning your next adventure, but if that isn’t possible right now, your best bet is to find some way of meeting other people who are going through the same thing. Do any of your study abroad programs maintain lists of alumni? Does your college have an international student center, or a program that matches ESL students with English conversation partners, or anything similar?

Best of luck. It gets better with time, I promise.

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Moving this to MPSIMS.

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First off, sorry about the wrong forum, I had originally put it in mpsims but then my browser crashed and I forgot to reset things.

Second, thanks for the ecouragement. Even cliche ridden encouragement is nice. Cliches get a bad rap.

I hadn’t really thought of this as post-travel blues, but it makes a lot of sense now that I think about it. I had been a little perplexed that I ddin’t feel the ‘reverse culture shock’ that I was warned of, but I guess it was just delayed by the euphoria of the return.

It’s something to think about. Anyway, I’ve lived through similar crises, it takes time andand after-school-special-style self reflection. I wanted to blubber about it with semi-incoherence for a bit.