A Personality Disorder Explicated

Posted on September 25, 2002 in Avoidance Mental Illness

I’m all too aware that I fall into an invisible class, a dirty class that makes some people take an instant disliking to me. I sometimes wonder if it is my clothes. I resolve to dress better, but new days come and I find the same wardrobe in the closet and no money to pick up new pieces. Or I think it is my back. I’ve got an ungainly back, a excessively long cambered spine that measures out almost as long as my legs. This is not normal. Else it could be my beard. Or an unfortunate accident over a meal like spitting out the tiniest piece of salad green at a punctuated consonant. I blame it on my mind — being too smart or too dumb for a crowd is dangerous, I gather. Yes, I worry. I worry that I drive people away with my very presence.

My trouble is that a whole room full of people could love me but one and the opinions of the one are what matters. It doesn’t matter what problems they have — they could be snobs or drink like a fish or egotistical — I worry more about my failings. And to save this one person future grief, I avoid the whole crowd. I see their signals and I feel like I got to leave.

This is my sickness, the disease on top of my other diseases; one that is different from the others because I have developed not from chemical imbalances or breakdown of aging organs, but through extensive practice. It has been good for me to see that others suffer, too. How I was rehearsed to be like this — to feel shame about “my place” is complicated and I am able to explain it only in pieces which often don’t make much sense to any rational mind but, nevertheless impell. What can for now except to pretend that I don’t feel the pain when I am in public, to pick at my fingers when no one observes, and cry in private because I don’t want to hurt another person with a possibly false accusation about their coldness towards me.