Reliving High School for Life

capt.band ...@sbcglobal.net (Bandaid)

I've said in this newsgroup that I was rejected in unnecessary, cutting ways, laughed at, teased just so I could be humiliated yet again. It's all true, but I'm still living out that high-school age script.
Nobody does that to me anymore. They haven't done it to me in many years. When I was in my mid-twenties, I asked young women out, or at least down to the corner so we could get to know each other ??“ one in a museum, another in a laundromat. They still said no, but they weren't mean about it at all. My expectations were still in a very old script filled with immature high-schoolers like I was.
I'm still stalled, though. I have no idea what to say to anybody unless it's work, can't make small talk. I'm 54 years old, but in many ways I act and feel like I'm still an awkward and clueless teen-ager who says something stupid ever time I open my mouth, not grown up enough for women my age.
I realize that I was a hideous dweeb, but if any of you were at G.W.
High in the late ???60's, thanks for nothing, you didn't have to kick the geek. He was down already.
When I was in high school kids were superficial, totally hung up on looks and car ownership. Being rejected was horrible, torture, and I still remember getting better-dealed before the prom like it was yesterday. But it was 35 years ago! What am I doing still giving them power over me now?
Shys like us miss important developmental stages, and it's extremely difficult to make them up later. I can't go out and try to make conversation with a 48 year old divorcee when I feel like I'm still acting like 16. Outside of my disastrous marriage, I've been on two or three dates since 1971. I know intellectually that the divorcee isn't going to pretend she likes me so that her friends can laugh at me at the mall; high school kids do that with geeks. So why do I still feel so small?

jimsummer ...@aol.com (Jim Summers87)

You've mentioned before how much we have in common. I graduated High School in 1991 and I'm 30 years old now but I was still viewing the world of High School as reality all the way up to this year..that's 12 years!!! One thing that I don't think is very easy to accept is that High School is like it's own Fantasy-Land, it's just one long bad dream and when you graduate, you wake up from that dream!
Immediately after I graduated, women were smiling at me in college or at the mall but in the back of my mind there was always the thought, "They are just mocking me. This is some trick." I've told the stories on this newsgroup about all of the women who have flirted with me since High School ended but no amount of women looking at me now will ever remove that self doubt that was given to me in my Teen Years. I remember in 1997 when a lady told me that I was smart, does it surprise you that the first thought in my head was, "Is she calling me a geek?" Even though this same girl later winked at me twice and rubbed my back....
High School made me so sensitive to insults or potential humiliation. Let me give you another example: In the year 2002 I was walking toward the door of the local county library. A pretty girl walked out of the door at the same time I was coming in, she looked at me and smiled, but I didn't smile back because I became immediately aware of her cellphone. She was talking to someone on her cellphone. In my paranoid mind she was about to tell her friend on the phone that she had just smiled at a dork, ME!!! I imagined that this would occur and therefore I didn't smile back and when she saw that I didn't smile back, her smile turned into a look of disappointment. I had ruined a nice moment with a stranger and why had I ruined it? Because High School had made me perceive everyone as out to hurt you...kids in High School lived to hurt other people's feelings, they conspired, manipulated, did ANYTHING they could to hurt me...
Capt, face it, we are still somewhat locked in a primitive animal mindset of looking out for the next attack. We have Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. We are mentally traumatized forever like a Vietnam Veteran experiencing permanent flashbacks and shellshock..
If the people in this group want to know why I'm still a virgin at age 30 it's because the last 3 beautiful women that have flirted with me, I didn't respond properly because I was still on-edge looking for threats to my ego..everyday I'm haunted by the knowledge of knowing that I threw away potential great romances and all due to my emotions being traumatized in High School.
The most beautiful girl who ever liked me disappeared from my life in 1998.
She flirted with me numerous times and all she wanted was for me to go talk to her, flirt with her and ask for her phone number, but High School had made me feel so bad about my appearance that I simply couldn't believe that a beautiful woman could ever want a Geek like me. I let her slip away. She was living in 1998, I was still stuck in High School in 1989.

Joe Canuck Joe_Can...@Canada.ca

Forget about the women. Make a life for yourself that you enjoy, and if in the course of doing and enjoying that life you meet a woman and pursue a relationship great! If not, well you have your life that you enjoy.
I guess the point is... stop making women the focus of your life.
--
"Its the bugs that keep it running." -Joe Canuck

jimsummer ...@aol.com (Jim Summers87)

That's easy for you to say, you are CANADIAN, you can just live for hockey!!!

tsilihin tsili...@hotpop.com

Hey! Don't forget us Australians, and our Cricket, Lamingtons and Meat Pies!

Data888 kcinSPAMBL...@bigfoot.com.au

oh, I hate that stupid stereotype so much. I don't really do/like anything "Australian", and the amount of crap I put up with for it is incredible.

jimsummer ...@aol.com (Jim Summers87)

You've never killed a koala? I hear that those little guys are the biggest ***holes!!! They may look cute but they are mean little shits....

Data888 kcinSPAMBL...@bigfoot.com.au

I don't know. Can I kill a cricketer instead? Or an AFL footballer?
They're far more annoying.

capt.band ...@sbcglobal.net (Bandaid)

Funny analogy for me, because Vietnam was going on when I was in high school. I don't want to exaggerate, but it's kinda like having been a POW.
It's not just the remembered pain. You and I and most of us missed out on learning how to initiate and develop these relationships. We lack skills, knowledge of how to interpret what they're seeing. Does she really like you or is she just fooling around? (half hour discussing it) You've noticed packs of kids endlessly whispering, gossiping, pointing to each other? They're discussing and interpreting signals, man, learning the code. You didn't do it and I didn't do it.
Here's a thought experiment. Pretend you were brought up in a cabin in the woods by your parents, who love you, but you had no social contact during your high school years. You come to town as an adult. You didn't have the trauma, but you'd still have trouble, because you missed out on some of the most important lessons you learn during those years. OTOH, you'd have a better chance of recovering because you didn't have the trauma.
Exactly. The 1998 woman is not the 1989 girl. I realized that slowly, too slowly to help me. I had some insight when I got up the courage to try to pick up the women in the museum and the laundromat, and they turned me down nicely. It still hurt, but I coud bear it.
Where you and I might differ is that I blamed myself, not them. I knew what a dweeb I was - I still cringe at the memory - there's no way I was going to get a date. I still don't feel like an adult. I don't lead an adult's life, except for working and being a parent.
I'm thankful I have two kids who love me very much - it's saved my sanity - but of course it's not the same as having that one person who loves you and goes to bed with you at night. Besides, I have to give up the kids to the adult world someday before long and not cling to them. One thing I am doing with them, though, is talk to them about not being mean. (They're girls) I've told them never to make fun of the geeks, and don't join in it; and, no matter how little they want to go out with somebody, say "no" politely.

"O_zean" O_Zeanhasnom...@nomail.com

Well, not all of them reject. The thing is to try on and try and try.
I am 26 and I feel like a 11 old year old shy boy. I havent learned anything in my life. I am so socially ****ed up/ YOu are no dweeb, I like reading your posts.
When i began to have no friends, I stopped carting about me. I dressed silly clothes and never went outside. Very sad.
Being rejected was horrible, torture, and I we have no proms here. GOD nO! pfff.....but that was 35 years ahgo. you said that yourself. Forget it. Proms are for extrovert people. Do what you really like to do . Music? any hobbys?
Me too. I can't wait when I become 60 Outside of my disastrous marriage, I've been on two Don't ask yourself why you are so sad. Start doing things now. I mean NOWWWWWWWWWWw. Start doing things you like. Read books, chat and stuff.
Enjoy life NOW. Don't let them get to you! OK? SHYNES IS BEAUTIFUL!

matthewfr ...@hotmail.com (matthew)

More likely she just find you funny looking,and can't help but smile.
I'm not saying whenever a woman smile at a man it's because she find him funny looking. It can be because she find him handsome too. I guess you have to look at the individual cases.
In your cases, that seem to be highly probable, considereng that you've tell us what an effeminated,lacking normal male characteristic beta you are.
I'm sorry if you don't like it jim.Again I'm not saying that actual normal men never receive smiles, I'm just saying (and I'm not the first to point it) that you seem terribly...-terribly- delusional..
it's extremely pathetic.
Women are very harsh on low quality, unmasculine males like us, jim.
[snip jim's wishful thinking]

matthewfr ...@hotmail.com (matthew)

newmediapr ...@yahoo.com (KC Carter)

That's how I felt before medication. Now I feel wiser and more mature, yet more youthful and energetic, than I've ever felt. You deserve medical attention. I think that most people with red faces have an anxiety problem, like me and you, and it can be cured!
KC

h8or ...@hotmail.com (Hater)

Very true. I can totally identify with the experiences you two describe; at age 29, sometimes I'm still shocked when people talk to me as if I were a normal person, and I can't tell whether they're being sarcastic (although, like KC_Carter mentioned, medication has helped me not care too much about that). I still think it's hypocritical when some people are nice to me, since they're the kind of people who would have tried to make my life miserable when we were younger. To borrow (or twist) Jim's example, the 1989 girl doesn't deserve to have grown into the 1998 woman.
I feel the same way--except for the part about being a parent, which I'm not. (Was there any point to this post other than to say "me too" to everything you've written?) I do like some of the "non-adult" elements of my life, though. I used to (and maybe still do) think that "normal" people, with their social lives, etc., were terribly immature, but I'm probably more immature in practical areas. Being picked on as a teenager teaches you a lot about what people are like, but not necessarily in ways that can help you. You can grow up and move on in some ways, but the effects are still there, and shouldn't be denied.
Hater

ki ...@freeuk.com (Kiven)

You are a special exception though, Matthieu. Judging purely by the stupidity of your posts, it's clear that you are the result of inbreeding and that makes you an abomination unto God. You should burn yourself at the stake.

matthewfr ...@hotmail.com (matthew)

After you bitch, after you.
Mathieu

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