full image - Repost: Building IRL relationships after a rather isolated childhood (from Reddit.com, Building IRL relationships after a rather isolated childhood)
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Excuse a long post.After a long period of retrospection, I have come to the conclusion that I need to be less selfish about my time and trying to build healthier relationships that I can rely on for the long term. I have gotten used to long periods of isolation without interaction with other human beings outside of digital interaction. As a pre-teen and teenager, I would spend entire summers without really seeing another soul my age outside of in the distance when taken out to dinner and such. While I can tell that my sociability was never the best, I could make friends and even stay over with others for the early parts of my childhood. Where it started to go downhill was around the Recession, around 2008 or 2009, when I was somewhere around 10 or 11, when my younger sister and I spent entire summers in the house just existing.When I got older, I got put into sports, which meant I saw kids for an hour or so, but I felt difficulty with connecting to a lot of them. This did give me some social connection (and I would practice with another kid sometimes separately, especially once I got a car), but I still felt a fundamental anxiety keeping me away from fully feeling comfortable with these people. I would eventually wall them off emotionally, or there would be things that completely put me off from doing much with them. Couple that with going to a different school than a lot of them, and I simply felt... alone, and felt better when I did not have to contend with a lot of the social conventions and the things that came with relationships.I got used to it. I'd jump on my trampoline, creating vivid fantasies of wrestling when I was younger or playing the hero in a shonen-style fighting tournament. It was great just to be someone else. Or I'd play characters in video games or find something to try doing, whether it was Toontown or Wizard101 or TF2. Or, I'd watch television. I enjoyed a lot of young kid shows and such. Of course, I lamented not really seeing other people my age (given that I didn't know of any of them other than a couple of them that weren't really around to be near when I was younger), but I enjoyed the ability to be in a place where I could feel more myself.At the same time, I struggled socially in school outside of summer. I got moved around in systems a lot. My district doesn't have a consistent stream of where people go between high schools and elementary schools, and I got the unlucky draw where, in sixth grade, I got taken out of my elementary school crowd and put into a group of boys whom, other than one other, I didn't know and who seemed to know each other. This happened two more times before I graduated high school. I was also... well, a very weird kid. I met another odd kid who is my best friend to this day (and whom I actually feel like I can trust), but most of the relationships I maintained in high school either fizzled out quickly, felt superficial at best, or took advantage of what became a desperation to have relationships with others.College helped. I found a friend group, but it still felt like I was the one reaching out to join them in their adventures. I started taking a lot of initiative to push myself to be in situations where I could be at least around people. I was an RA throughout almost all of college; I did college radio, and I took part in any study group I could find myself involved in. I came out to myself during college, and I've been handling the internal fallout that came with that pretty well.The pandemic changed that upward trajectory in the social front, and everything went virtual.It was kind of funny, because the time alone allowed me to transform myself. I was able to focus on studying for the LSAT, and I got above a 170. I was able to write a long senior thesis without the pressure and the time spent commuting to class, and I handled being an RA in a very stressful senior year. I was able to work 13 hour days dedicated to my goals, and I was able to build up my skills. But my relationships floundered. I stopped hanging out with anyone, and I stayed in my room most of the time outside of the fulfillment of my duties, the one in-person classes & need to grab food, and the extensive wandering and walking I would do just to get some air.Now, I really only talk to one person still that I met in college, and I do most of the reaching out. I currently live with my parents while working a summer job, and my relationship with them is... let's say, one-sidedly warm. Frankly, I've been somewhat scared of them since around the time that I started floundering socially. I'm heading to law school in the fall and I don't want it to be a repeat in the social sense. Since I cannot live on campus, a lot of the tricks that I used to keep myself busy and, at least on the surface level, getting the sorts of social relationships that I do crave on some level.But the problem is... I enjoy it. I enjoy the solitude most of the time, and I can fill days with projects, studies, and then a nightly call with anime from my long-distance significant other. I am content to be like the hermit in a cave, working tirelessly for ages on a project, only coming out to show my work. I'm learning to draw and continuing to write creatively... but the problem is that my way of living would directly clash with the needs of law school, and I can tell that, if I am not mindful of the need to maintain and curate relationships, I will struggle to network or find a job for afterwards and I might just go from school -> homework -> hobbies without slotting in social time, or even shut out that aspect from my life entirely.How would I best go about managing those two desires--the desire for complete solitude and isolation and control over my own schedule, but also the desire and the need to network and build relationships with others? I am very much afraid of repeating the same cycle in law school.
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