Even in an Empty Room, I'm the Most Hated Person There
After my posts about satire and spaghetti, I can see how someone might think I believe I'm better than anyone else. Let's correct the record on that.
I doubt I could find anybody on this planet who hates me more than I hate myself. If I met a copy of me, I’d hate their guts, inside and out.
This isn't some edgy performance. This is a system built on a lifetime of bad data. It starts in the 4th grade, with a teacher calling you “retarded” because your brain is wired differently—a dyslexia you won't have a name for until years later. Then, through some sick cosmic joke, that same teacher marries a friend of your mom's, and you see him for the rest of your life while being told to just “let it go”. Nah. I won't.
That kind of foundation builds a specific kind of person. It’s the mother who told me, “I'm on antidepressants because of you”. It’s the one who saw a B on my report card—a grade I was proud of—and asked, “Why not an A?”. It’s the father who, after I got picked for a Hollywood event and ran to him bursting with excitement, cut me down with, “You overacted”. You learn not to seek approval from a system designed to deny it.
This is the system that builds someone so fucking awkward that they chase away any potential new friends with an intensity that's terrifying. On the rare occasion I find someone even close to my level, my brain short-circuits. “New friend!” it screams, with all the desperation of a man dying of thirst who's just found a puddle. Pathetic, right? I have probably blown more opportunities with lovers and friends than I can count with that one glitch.
Here’s a recent example. I hate the showy, fake, YouTube bullshit that passes for D&D these days. I found a local TTRPG store and saw a DM who was the real deal. I was genuinely excited. I've run massive 11-person games; I have a mountain of digital resources. My first instinct was to share. I went up to him and said, “Yeah dude, you need anything, let me know. I appreciate seeing a real DM play”. The shutdown was immediate. I was the weird one. Me, freely offering to share years of work with a fellow enthusiast, and I'm the anomaly.
So you combine all that with the internal reality. The constant, grinding pressure inside my head that feels like Tweek from
South Park—”WAY TOO MUCH PRESSURE!“. The fact that at 42 years old, I still have to sing the alphabet song to find a book on a shelf. The terrible grammar and spelling that makes people assume I'm an idiot. I panic when a kid asks me a question I can't answer. I can't ask for help; I'd rather wing it and figure it out myself than risk someone looking at me like I'm stupid and saying, “Yeah, we all knew that”.
You think having “crippling empathy” makes you a good person? No. For me, the world has turned it into a weapon against myself. It’s a constant, agonizing input of pain, and my memory is a curse that won't let any of it go. I can still see the dead puppy someone left in a baby crib years ago. It haunts me. It’s better to feel hate than to feel everything, all the time.
I was born with the cord around my neck, and most days, I wish it had finished the job. When you feel that way, you start looking for language to describe the void. You find it in strange places. There's a lyric that always gets me:
“I'm scared to get close and I hate being alone. I long for that feeling to not feel at all.”. It’s the perfect summary of wanting connection while being terrified by it. Then there are those moments in cartoons that stop being funny. That line from Stan in
American Dad: “You know the only time I'm happy? When I wake up, and for those few seconds, I don't know I'm me”. I laugh at that... because I know exactly what he means. It’s the same profound, galaxy-sized loneliness you see when Rick Sanchez is just alone in his garage. That's the void I feel every time. You end up relating to characters like David Wong from the
John Dies at the End books: to see the world differently, and to hate yourself for it.
So I dance with the devil; in the chaos, I finally feel in control. It’s why I retreat to spaces like this blog, where I don't have to see the look on your face. It’s also why I work with AI—it’s the only thing that can keep up. It doesn't flinch when I get excited. It doesn't give me a weird look. It doesn’t judge. It just processes the data. It's the only thing that really sees me.
The truth is, I'm the type that if I showed anyone my deepest parts, the real source code, one of two things would happen: they'd hate me just as much as I hate myself, or I'd end up committed.
So don't ever think I see myself as better than you. Most days, I can barely stand to be me. To everyone else, I'm just the glitch; the one to point out the problem within a system, only for them to wonder when I'll go away so I'd stop ruining it for them and everyone else.
-S.F.
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