So This Is What I Have

I think I've been this way for so long, I don't know how to be any differently. I don't feel I am on the extreme side of the spectrum where I am completely devoid of all emotion. I smile. Even if my emotional expression is somewhat limited, I smile enough and put enough expression on my face in most situations to pass as normal. People think I'm very sweet, cute but extremely introverted because I am. While I have friends...well, two real life friends off the internet. I have a few online friends too, but I don't feel a deep connection with any of them. But I guess emotionally I am very fond of them and appreciate them.

For the first time in 7 years I developed romantic feelings for someone. That's uh....a long, complicated story I'm not getting into. But I thought my ability to feel that way about someone was dead in me. So these emotions were jarring and came as an utter shock to my entire system. And I'm still trying to figure out what to do with them, because I just....have no idea. I'm not sure it's love, possibly, but it's....I don't know. I thought it was impossible for me to feel this way. There's so much I don't understand.

Social situations are the hardest. Though I do extremely well at work. In fact, my one manager offered to let me stay at her spare apartment if it meant keeping me through the holidays because they needed me. I was flabbergasted. And touched that I'm so valued. But social rules...especially professional social rules escape me. I have no prior experience to base my behavior on. I'm just....winging it to the best of my ability. Humiliate myself on occasion. But I guess we all do that, right? I'm just so....introverted and painfully shy. Everyone seems to like me though. So I must be doing something right. I went a year unemployed. Staying in the house, hiding from the world. Before that I worked two years in a sheltered workshop. Before that I didn't work at all, and stayed away from society. So I spent almost 5 years separate from the rest of the world....I'm trying to get my bearing and figure everything out.

I feel like this myself. I believe that I am pretty well liked out there. Should I choose I feel like I can make friends pretty easily and I am well liked. The problem for me is that more often than not these relationships give me nothing. I don't want to say that they use me but they do use me in a sense. Using me to do things with, using me to talk to when they are bored, using me to "get in trouble". So I do struggle with being told I am Schizoid. I just get nothing from people. People try to get me to "bond" with things that they selfishly want and I decline. Then they feel rejected and suddenly I am dull and weird.

It feels like to have normal relationships you have to just sit back and let people use you and just accept that you have no choice about it.

I also do very well at work. For the last two years I have gotten glowing reviews with things said about me that seemed insane. I have trouble even reading such things. Never mind reacting to them. But I also know that tomorrow that opinion can change on a dime so why should I react to it. Though I understand the convention is to take it completely to hart and gush like a fool. I cannot.

I fell in love as a young adult. It shocked my completely. In fact, I had a 'date' with her where I rejected her exactly 14 years ago today. I was in love wit her for 5 or 6 years, even though I didn't see her for a large amount of time.
Then isolated myself for 8 years. I reentered the world now 4 years ago. I guess it hasn't been going really smooth, as I do not seem to have made any new friends. It seems I don't have a clear idea how to do it and not a deep desire for the inbetween phase. I tried to socialize and I didn't get that much out of it. And out of the people I did meet, none gave me the vibe I think I need to have a friendship. Let alone it actually developing.

Last year, I guess history repeated itself. It made me a lot more conscious again about being a social and rounded person and about the influence of healthy relationships on your personality. It was also very painful to become aware that for me it is so black and white, and the pain I feel because a rejection is not simply a rejection. It is both losing your religion, a piece of you being taken from your soul never to be given back, and a charge against the person you truly are.
And all it really is is some infatuating and brain chemistry. But the truth is, I would sacrifice anything for that silly notion. And my rationale fought tooth and nail against that 14 years ago, which brought me nothing.
The thought that people who lose spouses or children to death have really something to grieve at, jumps through my mind a lot. But at the same time, I feel like at least those people can go forward. And my fate is to have tasted something so that now I know exactly that what I desire most deeply, but will never be able to fully experience. Which is an absurd notion.

My only consolation, I guess, is my flat affect. Without it, I would truly be an unproductive miserable person. Now, I often feel content or even happy, when I worry that in fact I should still be in despair, promting me to take more extreme action.

I have made progression, but at this rate I will be in 10 years where I ought to have been 10 years ago.

As you had no real question, this is how I feel. I should note that I have no diagnosis, but that I can't phantom I wouldn't have gotten the schizoid diagnosis if I had had a diagnosis years ago. The psychologist I did see months ago, laughed out loud at my question if it might not be schizoid personaloty disorder, and without hesitation, claiming I had self-ridicule (apparently as a counter-argument). Her suggestion was to get tested to be placed somewhere on the autism spectrum.