Unequal Exchange

So I haven't really been able to put this into words for a long time, but I've been thinking about this on and off lately until just last night when the apparent root causes suddenly came into focus after reading a tangentially unrelated FB post (which is another story). To be honest, this didn't really come out as coherently as I'd have liked even after all that, so please bear with me.

The closest analog I can think of to what I've experienced (which I also experience but that's also another story) is imposter syndrome, but that's a term that's usually relegated to professional contexts. In this case, I'm thinking more about social contexts-- more broadly speaking, about having participated in multiple communities at least semi-regularly over the course of some years, but never really feeling a true sense of belonging in most of them. And why that is so.

And wondering if I'm just turned off now by any notion of participating in a larger community, to begin with.

There isn't a real starting point to this, so I'm just going to list off some things that may not actually be all that related to each other and probably aren't the best examples of what I'm trying to express, but seem just as relevant to me with regards to what I'm talking about.

1. The time when the Left Behind book series came around and popularized a [specifically dispensationalist pre-tribulation interpretation of] phenomenon in Christian circles known as the Rapture. And the paranoia that inevitably came about when I started wondering if I really truly believed or not-- which hasn't ever really left me since. (I could go on about how stupid this understanding of the Rapture is but meh.)

2. Nathan and I going over all of the occasions in the past number of years where he didn't remember me being present when I actually had been there all along.

3. The moment at Sunday service that prompted me to write this post.

4. When I said bye to Steven at Camp Jitterbug last year and thought, "I may not be back for a long time." Because at that point I was already feeling, "I can't keep up with this anymore."

5. The fallacy of how I somehow can feel up-to-date with another person's life just by keeping up with what they've been posting on social media when I really have no idea what's actually going on with them.

6. Lately, I've noticed that I've started forgetting how I interacted with people I used to know in high school but haven't kept up with since. And started wondering if I ever really knew them even back then, although my understanding of what it means to really "know" someone has shifted a lot since back then anyway.


The one thing that springs to mind for me right now after listing all of this is a sense of unequal exchange. In some of these cases I feel like I've sacrificed a not insignificant portion of time in my life to at least be present -- at Hilgard, at church, at swing (could even add Cisco-friends, IV, other roommates etc), and at the end of the day, I often still feel like a stranger, or that it's not that much different from me not ever having been present anyway.

But the more I think about it, the reality is... I probably actually haven't really been all that present after all. I mean, I haven't been to swing in over a year, Sunday service in a couple of months, and most of my other friends I see irregularly every one-to-few months or so. I am actually making what I've been feeling a reality at this point, and I don't really feel much different. If anything, I still feel just as tired these days as I felt when I was more socially out there in the past.

It may be that my stamina for being social has gone down a lot in the past couple of years. But I feel that what I had to start with as a base wasn't that great in the first place. I feel like I gave what little energy I had just to be able to be around people ("I go to parties just to be an introvert at them."), but that wasn't really enough to sustain a longer-term presence or relationship in the community that I would have liked to have, so I end up feeling exhausted at the end of the day and wondering what was the point-- other than the impression that these experiences might have left on me.

Which leads to where I am now. I went through a bunch of extremely low periods between last summer and this one, and only just now have felt like I've recovered enough energy to possibly reinitiate some of these things and be more social again. Only now, I actively experience feelings of resentment at the notion of returning. What exactly am I "returning" to anyway? Why should I be sacrificing more of my time to places and relationships that haven't really borne fruit from all of the time that I did commit in the past, even though that time may not have been as substantial or meaningful for other people as it was for me?

If anything, all that last thought tells me is that I'm not cut out for these communities. That I don't have what it takes to really be part of an active community again, because I don't have the patience or fortitude to work through another period of potential disconnectedness and heartbreak. It also reinforces another feeling that I've been having for a long time now.

"I'd rather be alone."

I don't know if I've really recovered at all.