06.02.2024, Jasmin Schweizer
Humans are social beings, basically.
I get into situations where I don't quite know how to behave, don't feel like I belong, can't place myself. I notice that I somehow stay on the surface, don't manage to connect. I don't feel like, or better, I don't feel the need to share, to engage with others and to get involved with their issues. In such moments I would like to be invisible. I feel lost, out of place, lonely in the moment. I want to leave. I'm actually already gone, because I never arrived. Sometimes I'd rather sing when others are silent. Sometimes I'm just stunned and I fall deeper than I was before.
I get into situations where I then simply pretend. I play the game, laugh, chat, listen, show interest. Afterwards, I sometimes feel empty, bored, but sometimes strangely light and carefree. Everything easy. Meaningless.
Sometimes I try not to get into such situations at all and stay at home. Alone. Don't participate. Then I use an excuse for this because I don't have the courage to tell the truth. But how can I explain my truth without hurting anyone? Can I explain it to myself at all?
Sometimes I want to belong. I long to be like everyone else, to be normal. I don't want to be alone, to feel different, weird and peculiar, to be excluded - at least in my thoughts and feelings. I am just like everyone else, not better, not worse, but just a human being, a social being, basically.
Enduring this contradiction has always occupied me. Am I simply a strange mixture between conventional and eccentric? Deeper I fall.
I am both more average and more unusual than I think. This realization helps me deal with my chronic and often hidden feeling of being alone, empty and isolated. I increasingly realize that individuality means being fully oneself and also accepting one's shadow side. Without individuality there is also no opposite pole: the similarity of people, my shadow. I need both sides, they belong to me. I am allowed to merge into the group, to be like everyone else and yet also have my point of view, live my individuality. That is normal for me. Deeper I fall, never ever, never ever, please.
Is it the same for others? I wish it so much.
translated from the original German version
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